Eden

43

We're still wandering around the marketplace, half an hour later, and I still have the water-barrel backpack on my back, when from inside the city's gateway there is a sudden shouting. I turn, and look, and see that a crowd is coming towards us, out of the city, shouting and calling to one another.

The crowd seems happy. A lot of them do, anyway. They seem cheerful, like they're having fun, although a few at the front, leading the way, seem grim.

I listen, and hear people shouting about a trial and an execution. They seem excited about that. They seem grotesquely excited, actually, as if the trial will just be a formality, and the result is already decided, and they're all looking forward to the execution which will certainly follow as a fun afternoon's entertainment.

That's pretty much what I hear, and I know enough about the past to think that it's probably exactly how they feel.

I look at the water-seller, wondering what to do, and she shrugs, and says, "Come on."

A crowd is a sales opportunity to her, I suppose.

We go over, and meet the crowd, and I notice that another water-seller does too. We join them, and walk with them, as they cross the open space between the gate and the marketplace on the bridge. We walk with them through the market, as they shout and jostle people a little, making way for themselves. We go out onto the bridge itself, beyond the stalls, and everyone stops a little further down from the spot where I filled the water-barrel. There, they form themselves up into a circle, so everyone can see and hear, I suppose.

We, the water-seller and Lexi and I, are well in among them by now, and end up quite close to the middle of the group. The water-seller is taking coins and dipping the wooden cup into the barrel, selling cupfuls to the people nearby. We've stopped moving now though, and are just standing in one place, so I don't have much else to do except stand there, and look around, and watch what happens next. And so I do. I can see between the nearer people, and into the open space in the middle of the crowd, where the grimmer people who were leading the way are now standing, a little apart from everyone else. I can see well enough to make out that there's a woman there, too, with the grim people, a woman who has her arms tied in front of her. She looks dirty, and a bit bruised, as if she's been fighting or been beaten. Her hair is tangled, and her face and feet are dusty, and her lip is cut and bleeding.