6.The Beasts by Duncan McGibbon (top rated books of all time .txt) 📕

Horde had a better deal,

twenty five thousand captives,

including the maid Fevronya

'stripping them naked

without mercy or regard

of the frozen weather

tying and binding them

by three and by four

at their horses tails

dragging them all bloodying

the ways and streets

of Zalensk land.”

 

Fevronya passed through Riazin to Sarai

the beech leaf passing to still grass.

 

Writing Desks

 

Arrived in Pistoia with his wife,

Bita who sewed helmets in Avignon,

Richo thanked the builder

 

'You say you are done with building

and now would attend to your trade

and to your soul,

as to the building, it is high time'

and occupied four writing desks,

painted grass-green.

From here he conducted trade

for two decades.

 

(Richo di Buonomo and Co.

Avignon, Pistoia, Pisa, Florence

Genoa, Valencia, Barcelona and Majorca

in iron, wax, alum, sandalwood,

English wool, leather, slaves, silk and saffron.)

 

Caroldo, ‘a cinque di giugno

morte del doge Andrea Contarini

Thirteen Eighty Three.’

 

Venetian sequins

purchased Fevronya for Tana,

a little naked bundle

strung out in a line of ten

live corpses.

 

Bita pretented economic interest.

 

Richo to his wife  

February Seventeenth

Thirteen Eighty Four

 

“...unable to get you a slave

from Circassia this

year as the plague has broken

out there and those

who come die on board

It would be bringing

La Moria into our own home.”

 

Finally the parcel was found.

 

August the Sixteenth Thirteen Eighty Four

“The ships from Turkey

and from Caffa

are in by now and

sometimes have good cargoes...”

 

Zer Alessandro Zen,

intimate of Caroldo l'humil

was reluctant to take

Russians with a reputation

for escape.

They changed Fevronya

to Orenneta, claimed her

to be Abkhaze

and she was paid for in aspres,

witnessed and signed.

And they stowed her

with twenty three others

between twelve and twenty eight years

in the ship of Gaspare Judex,

one of the Venetian mude.

 

Others, insured in hyperbers

went to Constantinople

and there to Ibiza,

one hundred and fifty heads

to Candia, ninety heads

and Cyprus, one hundred heads.

 

Seventeen bales of pilgrims robes,

one hundred and ninety one

pieces of lead

and twenty eight female heads

fell foul of the Isthmus,

Gaspare appealed to the Venetian Senate,

and Caroldo daily noting,

that the Constantinople representative

was paid fifty ducats

for twenty eight slaves dead

and Gaspare sailed on to Venice

with ten still living,

crouched filthy in his hold

along with the dead for evidence.

 

She was baptized at San Zaccharia,

the Pope, who had condemned all slavery.

 

'Item 'sold to Orenetta

the little slave who comes from Tana.

'Five ducats for a soul, plus five for tax

for her journey.’ Paraded in Venice,

frozen, shivering by the well-heads,

‘witnessed, bound and carried

across terra firma, three ducats.'    

 

Andrea, his agent, to Richo.

December Twentieth, Thirteen Eighty Four.

 

“No ship has come from Venice

with any aboard, but now it

cannot be long before they come

and you and your wife

will be provided as you wish.

Those who are here now

are not worth taking

for they are second-hand wares.”

 

Richo wrote in searchof others;

Richo to Andrea di Bonnaio.

May Twelfth Thirteen Eighty Five.

 

“Pray buy me a little slave girl

young and rusticha

between eight and ten years old.

She must be of good stock,

strong enough to bear

much hard work

and of good health and temper,

so that I may bring her up

in her own way.

I would have her only

to wash the dishes

and carry wood

and bread to the oven...

for I have another here

who is a good slave

and can cook and serve well.”

 

Item 'A little slave girl

of thirteen from Venice

bought by Francesco di Michele and Co

'Orenetta.’

 

A year later,

Bita protested

 

'I am fully disposed to live together

as God wills... you will not

change it by shouting'

 

Richo, played it soft

'When you come here

and hear from all men

concerning my demeanour,

you will be satisfied,”

but could he not cover the facts

with unbleached cloth.

 

Before dawn

on sixth September,

Orenetta gave birth

to a male child of Richo.

 

Luckly il fanciullo mio died

and was buried at the feet

of Richo's tomb in San Bernardo di Pistoia.

 

Yet Bita,

disquieted before dawn

could not look

on chests and coffers

and lined azure cloth

and her husband  late to bed,

without suspicion.

 

In the following year,

the slave according to omen had sired

another heir, 'a certain girl

was secretly placed

in the hospital of S.Maria Nuova'

whom Bita refused

then took back the gettatelli

resigned at least

to her upbringing.

 

'I have found one in Piazza delle Piero

whose milk is two months old

and she has raised that if her babe,

which is on the point of death,

dies tonight she will come as soon

as it is buried.'

 

Stephano to Richo da Pistoia:

 

« La mόria waxes in diverse places

and spreads in this direction.

In winter you will see tokens

in the fields or on our borders

and in February you begin to hear

that it has come inside the city.

It waxes all through July

and them begins to touch decent folk.

The bad air degenerates evil humours

which appear not for a while

and then in the heat burst forth”

 

The plague came to us

from Tana and Sorcat

Some say the plague began

when the Cumans, attacking

the Genoese traders at Caffa,

flung their brothers' infected corpses

over the walls of the city.

Others claim it began in Sicily

and arrived with the slaves

carried in the holds of Genoese ships.”

 

3.Caschaton.

 

Squirrel-Pelts

 

'I know you will be able

to procure me a slave

for my client Richo.

You will be solicitous

to mark and seek out

every little matter

even as if she were

to be your own.

However, I shall

consider her as any other

merchandise on which one

sometimes loses

and sometimes gains

on selling again -

Wherefore there is naught

more to be said.”

 

Karagu, the sparrow-hawk

dives on a field mouse

in Kirghizia.

A little child sees it, dressed

in a Circassian cap

with four silver goat’s hairs

from the top to the border.

A flaxen dress and squirrel-pelts

from her knees to the ankles.

She is four and tall for her age,

fair-haired, with strong legs.

It was Melitha, her mother, sold her

before her father, the fisherman

came back from the river;

told her to catch the wounded hawk,

the seventh mouth too hungry.

She settled her dues with the Mongol

family behind the church.

The traders carried her to the galley

Moored on the coast,

hitting her as she cried.

When the pungency of flax

choaked her once

she was allowed up

to see a deep water

and grey monotonous cliffs.

The sailors muttered the names

of places, “Tuabs, Socha…”

and then she went back to the dark

cupboard in the forward hold.

In Tana, they took her out

to march across the town

to a galley on which

she counted two masts and two sails

before the door of the prow

storage closed on her.

 

'Ship arriving in Genoa from Venice

on May twenty first  with

seventeen bales of pilgrims robes,

one hundred and one pieces of lead,

one hundred and twenty two sacks of wood

four bales of paper

three barrels of gall nuts

Ser Giovanni Olzo of Venice

and eighty heads.

                                     

'One of them is a woman who can sew

and do everything.  Too good for the people

of Ibiza for they are like dogs.  Your money

will be well placed in her.

 

Letter to Richo,

‘The slave you wanted

has died of wasting disease.

I will look again.’

 

Caschaton, the little

girl-wolf at her father’s

side as he drops lines in the river..

Caschaton wakes she can smell burning

And the sound of swords

striking metal and

the screams at wounded flesh.

Too many are shouting

to hear her yells.

Then the doors open

and she clings to a sailors’

arms until she sees

blue water and

the feel of weights on her legs.

Her screams bring the

Venetians to the prow.

She falls to the deck

from dead arms.

“I am Luc Tarigo, captain

of Venice. Don’t be frightened,

or you’ll fall.”

 

The Fondacca’s Agent

 

She was sold for four thousand

aspres baricats at Kaffa.

The notary, Belignano,

writing intentions to Our Lady

between deals.

The wicked are slaves:

the good are free.

On the galley, Stella,

a month passed.

She sat at the foot

of the hold steps,

a knife at the ready,

given her by Luc.

The space thick

with captive

bodies, flax, wool, silk,

hemp, canvas, rope, metals

and wooden wares.

When the ship

docked at Pera.

She was led out

with a fever

and re-baptised

at St Theodule’s

though she knew

the Latin and processed to

through the Westgate

to the “Ave’ statue

of the virgin.

The same day

-now the Venetians

were back-

she was sold again

 in hyperbers.

As the next creaking

hull departed

she looked out

at the hill of St Theodore

sinking below the horizon.

 

In eight months

she learned how

to be useful

above decks.

Bernardo,

the ship’s master

taught her Italian

and saw she could cook.                    

The Santa Martino

arrived in Palma harbour,

Majorca, under a sudden storm.

and she was taken

from another hand

Another mute

exchange

in the sunlit Plaza.

That night she walked

across the hills

with the Fondacca Richo’s

agent, Andrea,

on horseback.

She cooked for him,

but wandered at nights

among the escaped

Africans, stealing hens

and eggs and vegetables

from the fields

to save Andrea’s

housekeeping money

for seven years.

 

That autumn King Peter

signed the order,

Disminyuendo el numero

des esclavas en Mallorca

 A year later,

the Magister Exubii’s

floggings

made Andrea

lock her in the house             

despite her ‘Christian

features.’

 

Richo was becoming impatient

For the slaves to be cleared

‘I would not have you

take so long over the nails

that you lose the shoe.’

 

It was winter and the lime

trees gave them no cover

as they ran over the sand

to the rickety boat

that slipped into the current

like a gull in a storm.

 

When Ibiza came

into view the slave called

Aafia had to

stifle Catarina’s joy.

They made it to the camp

the same night

in the old castle.

 

In Majorca the slaves

rose in rebellion,

burning the stockades

and looting the warehouses.

After a night of

horses hoofs ringing

on cobblestones

and the groans

of the slaughtered,

rows of slaves

‘animated instruments’

were hanged, inanimate

in the Plaza.

 

A few days later,

the agents came

after the runaways.

Catarina’s money

was stolen

and she led the men

to the camp

in vengeance.

Back in Majorca

she cried when

she saw Aafia too

had been hanged

and as an escaped slave,

vicious of flight,

She was chained by

Piero da Giunta,

Richo's agent now in Ibiza,

while Andrea tried to sue.                   

 

The winter bill of sale

to Richo.                    

Assicurazione di Schiavi

Imbarcati Sur navi et i rische

di Morte, Tartar slave,

Catherina, from Majorca

to a Tuscan buyer insured for the sum

of fifty gold florins

against any risk

from the hand of God,

the sea, human beings

or her master.

Not against

flight, if she throws

herself into the sea

of her own accord.

 

In Piero da Giunta’s house

she worked in chains,

until put on a boat for Genoa.

As the boat went underway,

Catharina rushed for the gunwhale

and tried to throw herself off.

The sailors took her in to the hold

and put her back in Piero’s chains.

After landing, she was put

in a cart for Pisa, kept

under guard outside,

then taken to Pistoia

 

December Thirteenth, Thirteen Eighty Six

The deed of sale told all,

('healthy and whole in all her members

both visible and invisible')

'Not a thief, quarrelsome, bad tempered

vicious of (fugitiva)

'Purum et nerum dominun'

'to dispose of in his will,

judge soul and body

and do in perpetuity

whatsoever may please

him and his heirs

and no man may gain say him'

as laid by the Pisan branch

of the Florentine Signory.

 

Paparo’s wife complains

greatly of you that she

should suffer you

to send such a young

and fair slave

She says she would

never do such a thing

to your wife.

and women should

take heed not to do

such things to each other.

 

 

Papero’s Property

 

This morning when Monna Lionarda and

Monna Villana had gone to church your slave

Caterina went out and away

and we cannot find her

We have been to all

the gates and cannot find out

that she has gone

through any of them.

They say they have taken nothing

from the house

save the gown of romagnalo

wool she had on her

and a little purple gown

for feast days'

 

'A runaway slave is a thief,

for he steals himself

away from his master'

 

Returning to the house

On the dark wooden boards

The two women find Paparo,dead,

A fine dribble of red

on his hoar-white beard.

 

More proclamations

were made in the

market place with the name

and discription - Cave a signatis.

 

‘A slave of about twenty

ran away from us this eve

of dark hair and eyes

and a meet figure,

that is to say neither fat nor thin.

She is small and her face

not much like a Tartar's

but more like our fashion here.

and she speaks our language

not too incorrectly.

Her name is Catherina

She is owned by Paparo’s widow

and took with her all her clothes,

such as a a bluish shirt, quite fresh

and a gown and a towel

and other such trifles

and an old coat of  lambskin

with a black belt

and she likes

to wear a little cap.

She left the house

when her master was killed.

 

Please send a boy

to warn the boatmen

on the Arno and

the people in the brothels

for sometimes they

are taken there.”

 

A list of Paparo, Richo's debtor,

deceased, his property.

 

'He says he had a female slave

and a horse and two donkeys

and three fifths of an ox.

Let us put them down at twenty florins.'

 

As Caroldo wrote;

they quarrelled with other servants.

extremely quick with their knives

 

Caschaton had

meant to kill him.

No-one would dare

touch her again,

Not after she had

escaped to Ibiza,

when her lover

was hanging in Majorca

from a gibbet.

and the Spaniard

who had done so

was raping her, not caring

about her bruises.

The knife went in

and left too much blood

for so cold a man.

She wiped it on her skirt

and ran into a back alley

where she saw Orenetta,

 

“Orri, come down here, I wants you, Babboccia”

 

“I'm coming, you shit; what d’you want?

I haven't drunk or eaten a mouthful

today because of Mistress Bitch.”

 

“Then come down and cut da chat”

 

‘I‘ve got the washing, six pairs of sheets,

one hundred skeins of thread from the well

to weave the linen to marry off the daughter.

I can't come. The cauldron's boiling.”

 

“Cottio bugata : sie pa de benzuole!’

 

‘I’m no devil, no slut, Catarina.”

 

‘Chientu, margasse dui lina pozuona!’

 

‘Devil face to you! ...Caterina, what’s wrong?’

 

The white -clad