<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Bridget’s entrance into the Royal Market is hampered by her offering of only a very small bribe, though she does lean into the torchlight of the guards, cross herself, and give blessings (in Latin) to those who peer into the wagon’s interior. She hopes her dress and mild demeanor will allow her and her companions to pass without too much scrutiny. …</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Once inside the gates of Pest, Bridget is repulsed by the sight of the slave market. The spectacle is almost too much to bear. She sees on the woman’s face the sufferings she must have endured already and can only imagine what she may yet have to endure. Likely the spoils of war for some warrior band, Bridget thinks over the likelihood that this woman saw her husband, brother, son, father—whatever men were most important to her—die before she was taken captive. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Bridget feels a remarkable calm at times such as these, where she is reminded how much luckier she has been to be withdrawn to a life of Christ and contemplation than to be thrust willy-nilly into the role of wife and mother, to be at the mercy of those to whom her husband is at mercy. Dead, Bridget is safe from the trials of marriage and motherhood, though also painfully separated from her Lord. Yet that same death has changed her in other ways, and despite the woman’s sorrows, despite Bridget’s own desire to pray with her, for her even, she is slightly dazzled by the hushed rush and flow of blood just beneath the surface of the woman’s skin. She is dirty and badly in need of a bath, but as Bridget passes by, the sight of the woman’s trembling artery looks more delicious than any old memory she can conjure up of Fraulein Hadewijch. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Bridget’s trance is broken, however, when Elisabeth leans into her body and says, “Would you like me to find a translator for us, someone who can speak with the Hungarians?” Turning to look at her serving girl’s startlingly clean features, at least when compared with the slave’s, Bridget tells her that such is best and that the translator should be led back to their lodgings in Port Town. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: georgia;">Turning away from Elisabeth, with whom she sends Father Jacobus, Bridget steels herself to enter further into the market, looking for curiosities to fill the couple hours before she is supposed to meet with her sire. She settles the hood of her travelling cloak over her wimple, drawing herself into shadow so she makes not so interesting a target for merchants desperate to sell their wares. Quietly she strolls the lanes of the market, looking over the goods, recalling what it had been like in the much smaller village market she had been to as a child—certainly there had been no slave trade there. . . </span>