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Which did not deter him at all. “More like my personal love slave.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Also, when you dance for me, you will not need music. Your bells will make a special music.”
“Dance? This is the first I’ve heard of dancing.”
“All love slaves dance. Not that I know much about love slaves, but if I ever had a love slave, I’m sure she would dance. In any case, isn’t this wonderful?”
“Yea, wonderful,” she agreed, again with dry humor, which again he ignored. “I am not buying that thing.”
“Of course not, my blushing rosebud. I will purchase it for you.”
Meanwhile, her guardsmen stood at the outer perimeter of the tent, staring at them with bemusement, instead of the anger they should have exhibited. But then she realized why as two of the guardsmen went in and examined harem outfits, for their lady loves back home, she presumed. Men!
Her suspicions were proved true when Sidroc laughed. “Your wife will love you for that gift, Farle. And Gismun, your betrothed will want to marry you with haste if you dare to buy her one.”
Good gods! Has the man befriended all my guards?
After the purchases were paid for, and, yea, Sidroc did buy the scandalous garment, she insisted, “For some other woman. Not for me. Definitely not for me.”
He just waved her protests aside.
They were back in the marketplace, which now swarmed with musicians, jugglers, magicians, fortune tellers, and astrologers.
“Would you like to have your fortune told, peach blossom?”
That’s all she would need. Some fortune teller guessing her secret and spilling it to Sidroc. “Nay, not today, and stop calling me those flower insults.”
“M’lady”—Sidroc put a hand over his heart—“they are endearments.”
“Well, stop endearing me then.”
He just smiled.
In truth, she liked this playful side of Sidroc. Too bad he tossed his threats of bedchamber activities in betwixt every other nice thing he said or did. She felt like a fish on a Northman’s line, being pulled in, bit by bit. If nothing else, Northmen excelled at fishing.
And always at the back of her mind were thoughts of Runa, and how Sidroc must be informed about his daughter. But how? And when?
As they walked, and somehow he’d managed to link his hand with hers, fingers entwined, she noticed statues interspersed throughout the city, mostly of the first Constantine, for whom Constantinople was named.
One of the most unusual sights involved men sitting atop tall pillars high above the crowds. Sidroc explained that these were ascetic monks known as stylites who chose to live up on the pedestals praying. Food and water were passed up to them by other monks. Drifa did not want to know how other bodily functions were handled.
At a shop featuring everything marble from statues to a game with tiny balls called marbles, Drifa bought a cylinder that was used for rolling out dough for various sweets. Ingrith would love it. In fact, she bought two. The other for the Stoneheim cook.
Whilst there, Sidroc of course had to do something outrageous. Somehow he discovered these long marble things, like cucumbers, of various sizes, bulbous on the ends. At first she did not know what they were until she realized they were replicas of men’s phalluses. “This one is about my size ... since my head drilling,” he said, weighing it in one hand.
“You dolt!” She rushed from the shop, hearing his laughter in her wake. Her guardsmen stood at the front of the shop, unaware of his latest outrageousness.
Once he caught up with her, Sidroc said, “Do you not want to know what they are used for?”
“I do not!”
“Oh well, you do not need one whilst I am around.”
She would not even look his way, having realized three verbal jabs ago that he deliberately baited her when he had shown her a stall with the testicles of every possible animal you could imagine, and another where the mandrake root was being sold. He had to explain to her that the mandrake root resembled a woman’s female parts. As if she would know what she looked like down there!
So now she bit her bottom lip for silence. Glancing skyward, she saw that the sun was overhead. It must be about midday. “We should return to the palace if I am to prepare for my audience with the emperor.” She directed one of her guardsmen to pick up the case of amber that she had left with Ianthe for her inspection.
“I would get it for you,” Sidroc said, although she hadn’t thought to ask him to, “but I have an appointment with General Sclerus. ’Tis best I be in uniform for what I have to say.”
“Your request to quit the Varangian Guard?”
