“Yer not so much a Muslim, Rashid, that ye still don’t enjoy a fine bottle,” Miguel de Guaras chided.
Rashid al Mansur laughed. “Old habits, especially bad habits, die hard, Miguelito. This will be the last bottle I enjoy until I return to Europe, however. In Algiers I keep strictly to the law of the Prophet.”
“So yer a renegade,” said Cavan bluntly. “I’ve heard of men like ye, but until now I’d never met one.”
Miguel de Guaras winced delicately, and Rashid al Mansur turned cold eyes on Cavan. “I owe ye no explanations, Master FitzGerald, but I would suggest ye never use the word
renegade
in the presence of a man like me again. Have ye ever been a slave? Let me tell ye about slavery in Barbary. A slave is a thing without a soul. A slave is subject to its master’s every whim. If a man chooses to destroy one of his slaves for no reason he can do it. Every breath a slave takes is dependent upon its master’s goodwill. A slave has no rights, can own nothing, is nothing.
“Worst of all is the lot of a Christian slave who can receive brutal treatment for no other reason than his beliefs. Miguel has, I am certain, told ye that he, his brother, and I grew up together. Actually we are cousins. When I was sixteen I was caught in a slave raid, captured, and brought to Algiers to be sold. My fate was carefully outlined to me by the slavemaster in the state-controlled bagnio which is a combination clearinghouse, prison, and slave market. If I became a Muslim, he told me, my lot would be infinitely better for whoever bought me would eventually free me for my belief in Islam. I was fortunate for I was bought by an elderly sea captain to work in his gardens.
“Within a short time I converted to the faith of Islam to my master’s delight. He freed me, and as he and his wife were childless they adopted me. He taught me his old trade, and I am pleased to say I became a kapitan reis before his death which made him very proud. My adoptive father left me a rich man. I am feared and respected by my peers. I might have clung to the faith of my homeland, but had I, I would now be dead after several unpleasant years in the quarries, or in the galleys.
“Tell me, Master FitzGerald, what would ye have done in my place?” and then Rashid al Mansur laughed for he knew the answer to that question. “Your scruples cannot be so great else ye would not be selling your own flesh and blood into bondage simply for gold,” he noted dryly.
“I apologize for bringing aboard an extra passenger,” said Miguel de Guaras.
“Our voyage is not that long, and we have plenty of food and water,” replied Rashid al Mansur. “Actually I have several maidens aboard this trip by a stroke of good fortune.”
“Several?” said Miguel de Guaras. “How did ye manage that?”
“Pure luck, amigo! Pure luck! I came across two young sisters whose mother had just died, and they were being dispossessed from their slum by an irate landlord to whom they owed money. He was ready to place those two delicate flowers in a local brothel. I paid him what he was owed plus a little extra, and took the girls with me back to the ship. They are eleven and ten, and both blond virgins! A third girl, another blond virgin, I bought from a friend of mine who has a brothel, and keeps an eye out for me when I am in London. He used to work for your brother, Tonio. This girl, however, is older. Thirteen, I believe she told me. I will clear a nice profit with those three plus my commission on the woman you brought me. Is she a virgin, too? She looks a bit old for it.”
“She is in her early twenties,” said Cavan, “and she is with child, or so she says. She is a prime piece of goods, a noblewoman of impeccable breeding with hair like polished copper, fair skin, and light eyes of silvery gray.”
Rashid al Mansur looked over to his bed where the caped figure of a woman lay. The Irishman certainly knew how to pander his merchandise, but he had yet to see that merchandise, and so he would reserve judgment. “What did ye give her?” he asked Miguel.
“Just a drop of sleeping powder,” replied the Spaniard. “She’ll doze several hours.”
“Then let’s strip her now and see what we’ve got,” said the captain. “It’ll be easier with her unconscious. Highborn wenches always carry on so, and ye end up having to tear the clothing from them. Her garments are expensive, and will bring a nice penny, too, if they are kept in decent condition.”
The three set to work removing Aidan’s garments. They were careful, indeed almost gentle, but when Cavan went to remove the necklace from his cousin’s neck Rashid al Mansur stayed his hand.
“Leave it, Irishman! Naked upon the block such adornment will add interest to her.” He signaled to his slave. “Take the woman’s clothing, and put it away for sale. All but the chemise. She will need that while we are at sea.”
The slave gathered up Aidan’s clothes, and began to go through them looking for the undergarment he had been ordered to leave. Finding it he put it aside, and departed the room. The three men stared in awed silence down on the nude, sleeping woman.
“Madre de Dios,” breathed the Spaniard, “she is perfection!” and he felt himself hardening, but he could not look away.
Cavan FitzGerald was speechless with surprise. He had not expected such a beautiful body on Aidan, but she was totally incredible with her long legs and torso, and her beautiful breasts. He, too, felt desire bolting through him. Maybe he shouldn’t sell her. Maybe he should keep her for himself.
Rashid al Mansur correctly divined his thoughts. “Don’t be a fool, Irishman,” he said. “In the light of day there are few women who would bring you on the block of Algiers what this woman is going to bring you.”
Cavan shook his head to clear it, and took a deep breath. “Yer right,” he said, “but by God I’d have liked to have fucked her once!”
They put her chemise back on, and then Rashid al Mansur called his slave to him, and had him carry the unconscious Aidan into the cabin next door where the other three girls were being kept. The slave gently placed her upon a straw pallet covered in a red cotton, and not once did she stir until morning colored the skies to the east over France.
Her head ached, and her mouth felt dry and unpleasant. Her belly cramped uncomfortably, and she thought hazily that her line with the moon must be broken and upon her. As that idea penetrated her brain Aidan gave a cry, and sat up. How could that be? She was with child! She felt a stickiness between her legs, saw the blood upon her chemise, and then she began to scream in earnest startling the three young girls sharing the little cabin with her into terror so that they began to shriek also.
The door to the cabin was opened, and a large black man hurried into the room. Aidan cried louder, totally confused, and frightened, and very much aware that she was losing her baby,
Conn’s baby.
A hard pain tore into her, and she retched up a yellow bile. The black man took one look, and shouted some unintelligible words into the room behind him. Rashid al Mansur pushed by the slave, and went directly to Aidan.
“Stop screaming!” he said in a firm, no-nonsense voice, and surprised she did. “Tell me what the matter is, copper-haired woman.” He spoke in English although his words were heavily accented.
“I am losing my child,” she said, and she began to sob.
“It is God’s will then,” he answered her. “How far gone are ye?”
“Two months, perhaps a little more.”
He nodded. “Lie down while I call for the physician.”
She obeyed him, but asked as she did so, “Where am I?”
“In time, copper-haired woman. For now let us concentrate upon your difficulties.” He turned to the black slave, and said, “Send for the physician.”
The slave ran from the room, returning in a very few minutes with a small, white-robed elderly gentleman.
“The woman believes she is losing her child,” Rashid al Mansur said to the doctor. “She is two months gone.”
The physician nodded, and kneeling down examined Aidan with gentle hands, sighing, and shaking his head sadly. Finally he looked up. “The deed is already done, my lord kapitan reis, but she is young and will undoubtedly live to bear many fine sons. I will clean her up, and attend to her birth canal so that there will be no infection. She will be all right in a few days, and certainly by the time we reach home.”
Rashid al Mansur looked to Aidan, and spoke in as kindly a fashion as he might considering what he had to tell her. “Achmet says you have indeed lost your baby, but that ye will live to bear many fine sons. He will take care of ye so that there is no infection. I am going to put ye in my own cabin for yer comfort.”
“Who are ye?” she asked him.
“My name is Rashid al Mansur, and I am a kapitan reis out of the city of Algiers.”
“Is that where we are going?”
“Aye.”
“So ye may sell me into slavery?”
“Yes.”
“Where is my cousin, Master FitzGerald?”
“He and his companion were put ashore on the French coast just before dawn,” said Rashid al Mansur.
“I am a very wealthy woman, captain. Turn back to England, and I will see ye well rewarded, far in excess of whatever commission ye might get from my cousin.”
“I know your story, copper-haired woman,” said Rashid al Mansur. “You have no monies.”
“But I do!” Aidan insisted, and the tears began to pour down her face. “Telling my cousin I didn’t was merely a ploy on the part of Lord Burghley to smoke out Cavan and his accomplice. Turn back, I beg ye!”
“Desperate women tell desperate lies,” said Rashid al Mansur. “It could be that you are speaking the truth, copper-haired woman, but what if you are not? I could be arrested by your people, and thrown into prison, and easily lose everything that I have spent my life building. On the other hand if I go on to Algiers, you will bring your cousin a fine price on the slave block, and I will have a nice commission for my troubles. Tell me what you would do, copper-haired woman?”
“I know what ye are saying to me, captain,” said Aidan, trying to keep the hysteria from her voice. “Ye are telling me that ye will not jeopardize all ye have for my sake, but I am not appealing to yer sense of greed, I swear it. Lord Burghley suspected that my cousin was involved in some plot against the queen. He knew that my husband was not, but they did not know if the plot was political, or if Cavan was simply attempting to rid me of Conn so he might marry me and have my wealth for himself. Telling Cavan I was now penniless was the means by which Lord Burghley hoped to smoke out my cousin.
“I am not lying when I tell ye that I am a rich woman! We do not speak of my husband’s wealth, but mine! Turn back to England, and I swear ye will not be arrested, nor imprisoned. I will pay ye whatever ye desire if ye will free me!”
Rashid al Mansur had lived in Barbary for twenty-five years, but never had he forgotten his fear when he had been first captured by slavers. He knew that the copper-haired woman was even now experiencing the same thing, and since he was not an unkind man by nature he was genuinely sympathetic. Therefore he deigned to attempt an explanation to this woman.
Kneeling by her side so that their faces met he said, “Listen to me, copper-haired woman, attempt to understand. You appear to be intelligent for a female, and so I will try to explain this to you. You are now technically the property of the Dey of Algiers, whose gracious overlord is Sultan Murad III, Defender of the Faith, and master of the Ottoman Empire. I could not return you to England if I wanted to because you do not belong to me, and I am an honorable man. You will be sold in the state-owned slave market. Your cousin will be given a share of your profit, as will I, but the dey will also profit, and I have not the right to steal from him. Do you understand?”
Aidan looked at him a moment, and then she turned her head away, but not before he had caught a glimpse of the tears that had sprung into her eyes.
“Can you give her a potion to make her sleep, Achmet?” Rashid al Mansur asked his physician. “I have just explained to her her fate, and with the loss of her child to add to her woes she might consider the unthinkable.”
“Of course, my lord,” was the reply.
“How is she physically?”
“She is a strong, healthy woman by nature. I cannot say if she would have lost the child without the distress of her situation, but I doubt it. She needs rest, freedom from worry, and good food now to recover. She should be quite well by the time we reach Algiers, but it would not hurt to cosset her somewhat. Tomorrow let the other girls of her race come to keep her company. It will prevent her from going into herself.”
Rashid al Mansur nodded, and then said to Aidan, “My physician will see that you are well cared for, copper-haired woman. No one will harm you, and you have only to get well again.”
Aidan would not even look at him when he spoke to her, but the kapitan reis understood. Quietly he departed the room leaving Achmet, the physician, to cope with his patient. Achmet had completed his examination of Aidan, and he had skillfully attended to her body which was yet in pain. Her chemise had been soaked in blood, and so it had been removed, and finished with her he covered her with a light coverlet. Then reaching into his medical pouch he took out a round, gilded pill, and pushed it between her lips. It never occurred to Aidan to refuse him. She accepted the goblet he next handed her, and swallowed the medication. He stayed with her the few minutes it took for her to fall asleep again, and then the physician left the cabin.
The next time she awoke the moon was streaming in through the cabin’s windows. Aidan lay quietly beneath the coverlet, barely breathing as she sought for answers to the questions that popped into her head at a rapid pace. Where was she? A ship! Was she alone? Aye. There seemed to be no one else in the cabin. Where was Conn?
Conn was in the Tower!
And with that knowledge she remembered all. She was a prisoner aboard a ship of the Barbary fleet. She was being taken to Algiers to be sold into slavery. She had lost Conn’s child, and she was never to see her husband again! Aidan began to cry.