“Some rich people, in decent circumstances, also shared in this detestable barbarism. Among them, some were reduced to it by need, others did it out of greed and to satisfy a taste for it.”

Between the hour’s long tryst that followed on the relaxing bath, and his show-off stunt of jumping out the window into the saddle—which nearly crushed what was left of his balls, but did give Miriam something grand to remember him by, besides the silver and gold—he was hardly fit to walk by the time he got to the stables.

The stable gate was guarded by two mustached Turks who had thought it was a good idea to shave their beards and grow ridiculous looking mustaches. They seemed to not like him at all. But then again they were just goddamned Turks, the slaves of the Arabs. He did not permit a stable hand to take in his mount. As was always his way he stabled El Frank himself. If they were to be a team they each had to know the other’s whereabouts. El Frank’s superior hearing and sense of smell permitted him to keep track of Yusuf. But his human partner needed to rely on memory.

As Yusuf and El Frank walked with the stable hand past the stalls they saw the black tail of an Arabian mare swishing in the lamplight. El Frank stopped and so did his master, tossing a copper to the stable hand. “Get lost kid—go”

Not even taking El Frank all the way to the assigned stall, which was five down, Yusuf patted his partner on the jaw, “Here you are you ugly mule—better than you deserve! Take your time as I’m hungry and must converse with this Moroccan. And mind you she’s four hands taller than your runt ass so don’t scuff her back up with those shit-stomping hooves. I don’t need her owner coming after me.”

As he walked out the stable boy darted out of the shadows and found the point of Yusuf’s long knife at his throat.

“You were about to say boy?”

The boy was terrified, eyes looking this way and that.

"Out with it kid. I don’t respect a backtracking scoundrel.”

The boy was in a fright with eyes wide and fixed now. “I was going to extort you for another copper for not telling the Turks that your pony is going to mate with the Master Bengar’s mare—and, I think it’s a funny trick, and would be willing to assist him, for, say a silver!”

Yusuf sheathed his knife and flipped the boy the coins, “There you go rat bastard. I will return before dawn so make certain you stick around.”

His legs barely carried him around to the front door, his knees popping and his ankles creaking as he limped down the alley. ‘Miriam, My Dear, if I have cause to run this night you might have turned out to be the death of me.’

The guards at the door were not Turks, but rather Berbers of the most vicious sort, two turbaned bandits that were no doubt hired from among the clans of the Riff. He stopped before them with hands on hips and looked from one to the other rudely, until they parted. He caught meaningful eye contact between them and decided then and there that if they both together approached him anywhere other than here at the door that it would mean a licking of knives.

A little thin black eunuch offered to take his vest and his knife. He declined with a nod. It was bad enough that his club was lost.

‘The aroma is so good—what delectables have they been cooking—at last, my first meal in days!’

He nodded his approval to the eunuch and gave the ‘price?’ look.

The eunuch flashed three fingers and his teeth.

Yusuf tossed him three silver—he never touched palms lest he be seized, and always tossed payment in case of a double-cross. He entered through the beaded curtains into a lamp-lit paradise by its scent, and according to the sweet rattles played by an elderly woman by the archway. But, the sight of the wretched people gathered about the long palm plank table on bare stools gave an evil cast to the room.

There were three doors—besides this one to the street—that opened off of this large feasting room. To the right was what looked like a privy doorway. To the left was obviously the kitchen doorway, as the wonderful scents of simmering fricassee wafted from there. Ahead was a doorway plugged with a cypress-plank door of heavy construction, which he gathered was barred and must lead up to the third-floor Master’s quarters through a second floor that was probably the guardroom.

There were two stools left, one of plain wood, one inlaid. The eunuch motioned for him to take the inlaid seat. The table steamed with exquisitely spiced fricassee. Yet the people did not seem of a class to be able to afford this meal, except for a white-capped sycophant who sat an inlaid stool alongside another of his type. They both nodded to him respectfully and engaged each other in conversation, ignoring the others, who despite their good dining fortune seemed to be eating their last meal—gluttonously, and without relish.

There were some odd things about the table setting. There were no boys about, the only servant being the black eunuch. With the absence of bread and grain, with the meal consisting of nothing but meat, sauce, and spice, it was difficult to eat properly. So, in the absence of bread, ‘trenchers’ like the barbarian Franks used to sup, had been formed of cut palm leaves. Also, while Yusuf and the two sycophants were provided with a carafe of coffee, the others drank the Christian poison—wine!

The nine wretches, the two sycophants, Yusuf, and the empty chair, made for a setting for thirteen. The thirteenth diner was absent.

‘Thirteen is an unlucky number, the number of diners at the Christian betrayal feast.’

‘This smells like food for angels! Dig in, but don’t eat too much. The Berbers or Turks might waylay you.’

Yusuf ate with gusto, having forgotten how hungry he had been after three days' ride. After he cleared his first plate a large black eunuch—fat as could be, and obviously the cook by his stained apron—came from the kitchen with three plates, and sat one each before Yusuf and the sycophants. A black boy helper followed him, holding straw lots in his little charcoal-colored hand. The small black eunuch that had ushered him in, and had refilled the coffee carafe, then spoke, “Those who have offered payment by lottery?”

The nine wretches raised their shaking hands, one still licking at his plate like an animal as he did so, as if it were the Fruit of Eden itself.

‘What manner of business is this?’

The elder sycophant patted his arm and whispered, “The diners who cannot afford coin, pay in the kitchen. An equitable solution to poverty and famine, don’t you think traveler?”

He momentarily suspected these people of flesh-eating, but, having tasted whore-pot stewed child, and knowing well what human flesh tasted like, he felt himself beyond deception in this matter and quipped, “I’d rather starve than scrub crockery in an eunuch’s kitchen.”

The sycophants seemed to think that statement the funniest thing they had ever heard and laughed silently under their breath with wicked grins.

Each and every one of the nine wretched diners drew a lot, and, finally, when it was determined that one grey-bearded sloe-eyed merchant—who had no doubt lost all of his merchandise to the famine—had drawn the short straw, he collapsed in tears as he was dragged by the scruff of the neck back to the kitchen by the pitiless cook.

He looked to the usher who was eyeing him with some concern. “Where is your privy, I must pick my teeth and blow my nose, among other things, and this is not the place.”

The black indicated the doorway he had suspected and he hobbled off, his legs having been sacrificed on Miriam’s pagan altar. He noticed that there were multiple doorways in this narrow lamp-lit hall and decided to inspect them all, as he still suspected the Berbers might try and waylay him and he wished a back way out.

The first was a privy stall.

The second was a washroom.

The third doorway housed an immense stack of bones, which were not of goat, lamb, or any other four-legged variety.

“Oh, you slits of Kismet!”

Frantic, his stomach beginning to churn, he walked down the hall to where it fell off into a cold storage cellar and looked into the pit of damnation itself, a cavern of butchered humanity, cut according to the butcher’s art.

‘No—I do not—v’

Yusuf hurled the contents of his stomach over the stairs of the meat cellar and immediately became paranoid that he had lingered too long and ran; ran back down the hallway, burst into the dining room, and looked to his left, as the two Berber’s and the usher came through the beaded doorway.

He could smell the vomit on his beard.

His legs were stiff and weak and his head swam with nausea and fatigue.

The shorter Berber was his match and more, wearing mail under his robes, and fingering a wicked yatagang.

The taller Berber had eyes like pinpoints and was not a man to suffer a ruse. He immediately judged that he could not take these two in combat even as the tall one drew his saber with a savage smirk on his narrow black-bearded face.

He feigned a leap onto the table to give himself a step-off lead as they braced and the diners scattered across the floor. Then he turned and charged for the cypress-plank door.

‘If this thing is barred I am in the next fricassee!’