The market in Troy was rich and sprawled right next to the harbor.
No need for merchants to go far. You unloaded goods from the ship, laid them out and sold them, calculating their value in grain or silver shekels in your head.
And then you had to calculate backward to buy other goods for sale with that grain that didn't exist. And the price of grain still depended on the harvest.
Ugh! A merchant's lot was heavy!
Good thing major deals were counted in silver by weight. You just had to remember that the weight of a shekel could float from city to city.
Ugh!
No fewer than a hundred shops sheltered from the sun by canvas awnings displayed their wares to buyers.
Here they traded everything that existed in the world!
Here were skeins of yarn from the land of Hayasa, and here multicolored fabrics from Sippar. Alabaster vases and golden scarabs from Memphis sat alongside elephant tusks and hippopotamus teeth.
Logs of Lebanese cedar, unmatched in construction, lay in separate neat stacks, separated by thin sticks. They'd been brought by Canaanites from Tyre and Sidon.
And here an Achaean from Mycenae had laid out his thin-walled pots painted with extraordinary skill. Few knew how to make such pottery, and demand for it was high.
Here was the finest Egyptian linen from Per-Ammon, the best of all. And here gold jewelry from Babylon, lying next to unusually beautiful weapons brought from the distant islands of the Great Green.
Pistachio tree oil in small pots and aromatic resins from Arabia were sold alongside chunks of frankincense harvested on some unimaginably distant island in the land of Saba.
All this magnificence was soaked in heavy aromas of anise oil, cumin and coriander, which mixed together in the most incredible combinations.
And of course, they sold copper here. There was lots of it, mostly brought from Cyprus. That island had mines with rich ore, and the petty kings of Alashiya—that's what they called Cyprus here—had long been subjugated by the Hittite kings.
Only one merchant sold tin, and buyers swarmed around him. The merchant was in no hurry—he wanted to get a good price.
There were lots of slaves here too.
There they sat right in the dust, with dead eyes from which life had departed. On the faces of most of them was written grief. They'd lost their homes and relatives in the continuous war that had been tearing up the coast for many years.
Gangs of sea raiders struck at dawn, robbed and burned, which is why slaves were now unusually cheap, way cheaper than even twenty years ago.
There were just too many of them.
In that chaos of lawlessness into which the world was gradually falling, the old rules no longer worked. The agreement concluded by the kings of Egypt and the land of Hatti could no longer protect people from raiders crawling from everywhere.
Slaves born in the house, on the other hand, sat with dull indifference on their faces. They didn't care who they served, as long as it wasn't in a quarry or at the copper mines. That fate was worse than death.
They'd grovel and inform, just to ease their lot and get an extra piece of flatbread. They'd learned from childhood that a slave was a thing, and therefore couldn't have a conscience.
No judge would accept their testimony without torture, because a slave was deceitful and base just because of his name.
"Slave woman! Beautiful slave woman!" Rapanu shouted—he'd seen this spectacle many times. "She sings, dances and plays the kithara! Her face is like the full moon, and her lips are like corals from the land of Dilmun! Her caresses will be hot as fire! Buy her!"
People came up one after another, but learning the price, they just whistled respectfully and walked away.
The dark-haired kid with the round cat face was asking some absolutely unthinkable sum for her. Though there were some genuinely wealthy buyers here.
"How much are you asking for the slave woman?" Some fat guy in a bright blue cloak with gold bracelets on his wrists approached Rapanu.
He looked at Theano with the heavy gaze of a butcher and apparently was satisfied with what he saw.
"Seventy Babylonian shekels, sir," Rapanu answered with dignity, sticking his thumbs in his rich belt and puffing out his chest.
"You've lost your mind, kid!" the stunned buyer recoiled from him. "She's just an ordinary girl! She has narrow hips and small breasts!"
"She hasn't given birth, so her breasts are perfect, like a ripe peach. And she's a virgin!" Rapanu immediately parried, and his father, watching his son's first experience, nodded approvingly.
"Forty!" the fat guy offered. "Forty and not a shekel more! And that's if she's as you say!"
"Sixty-five!" Rapanu shot back. "You can examine her!"
"You can be sure I'll examine her," the merchant smirked and gestured with his hand: strip, girl.
Theano sighed, untied her tunic belt and pulled it off over her head.
Timothy greedily fixed his gaze on her, his eyes roaming over her body filled with beauty.
He understood: standing in view of hundreds of men was unbearable for the girl, especially when they examined you like some mare.
This wasn't Greece, where they saw nothing shameful in nudity. Here morals were much stricter—you didn't walk around naked.
The buyer turned the girl this way and that, squeezed the sharp mounds of her breasts, then made her bare her teeth and open her mouth wide so he could examine her teeth.
Her teeth turned out to be white and even as a thread, and he grunted with satisfaction.
"Fifty!" said the merchant. "And that's my final word. Buying an ordinary girl for a mina of silver is complete madness. I'm looking for a gift for the king of Mycenae himself, but this is too much!"
"She's not an ordinary girl," Rapanu said insinuatingly. "She sings, dances and plays the kithara. And she's untouched by any man. There stands my father Uertenu, he's a royal tamkaru from Ugarit. He's known in every port of the Great Green. You can trust me, sir. I swear to you by the name of the god Kothar-wa-Khasis, patron of merchants! May Baal-Hadad send a storm upon us if I'm lying. Fifty-three!"
"Fifty-one!" the trader extended his hand. "Prepare the bill of sale. Just indicate her age, distinguishing marks and her skills in it. The word of a royal tamkaru and an oath by the names of the gods is enough. Respected Uertenu, you have your seal with you?"
"Of course," the merchant nodded and pulled out from inside his tunic a stone cylinder decorated with skillful carving. It always hung around his neck, even in his sleep.
Servants brought a lump of clay, flattened it on a stone, and then the traders drew up the bill of sale, decorating the tablet with rows of Akkadian cuneiform.
It was in the language of Babylon that all business and diplomatic correspondence was conducted in the known world.
Merchant Uertenu pressed the cylinder to the tablet lengthwise and rolled it with his palm, leaving an intricate impression. There was no other like it in the world, and you couldn't forge it—the fraud would come out immediately.
"The deal is done!" the buyer declared solemnly. "Now we'll fire the tablet in the oven, and I'll pay."
"Tell me, good master," Theano whispered quietly so Timothy could hear her too. "How much would I have cost if I couldn't sing and dance?"
"Half that amount," Rapanu answered after thinking. He was so happy he let her get away with unthinkable impudence. A slave couldn't speak to the master first.
"And if the slave woman had already known other men?" Theano looked at him with an innocent expression.
"Maybe ten shekels," Rapanu shrugged. "If she's pretty, fifteen. Wait! What are you hinting at?"
He began to slowly turn pale, understanding what he'd just done.
"What now, chubby-cheeked chatterbox!" Theano said with tender hatred in her voice. "Shit yourself? Good! I can't dance or sing! And I only saw a kithara from far away in my village."
"So you're not a virgin?" Rapanu whispered in a strangled voice.
"Virgin, yeah right," Theano snorted. "I've forgotten when I was one. I'm curious what your father will say when he finds out you sold damaged goods in his name? And swore by the gods too! So, should I tell the buyer you lied to him, you lying puppy?"
"I'll skin you alive right now!" Rapanu began to turn purple as blood rushed to his face. He'd never been so ashamed in his life.
"You won't lay a finger on me!" Theano said, enunciating each word clearly. "The deal's done, and nobody wants it to fall through. This warrior won't like it if my price drops. Right, guy?" and she jabbed toward Timothy.
"Right!" the guard couldn't hold back and roared with laughter, slapping his thighs. "I want to get my share. Don't even think about hitting her, Rapanu! She's not yours anymore, and I won't let you anyway. You're some piece of work, girl! And you, Rapanu, get ready to buy lunch. You lost the bet."
"Be afraid!" Theano proudly turned away from her former owner. "I can still disgrace your family. They'll mock you in every port. Wherever you go, everyone will laugh in your face. You won't be able to sell a faded goat hide to anyone! Who'll do business with a liar and oath-breaker! Pray, bastard, that I end up in the king's own house. Otherwise you're finished!"
"Great gods!" Rapanu whispered. "Why such humiliation for me!"
He didn't notice how Timothy placed a silver ring weighing a shekel in the girl's palm, and she quickly stuck it in her mouth.
She'd promised he'd win this bet and asked for his help.
He hated losing the silver, but Timothy had sworn by Enyalios, god of warriors. You'd never see any luck if you broke such an oath.
Though the girl hadn't lied—he'd get this loss back with interest and even eat well at the employer's expense.
And such entertainment was priceless anyway.