Bernard remounted his nervous horse, gripped the reins, and muttered, “I feel such a total fool.”
“You handled that perfectly,” Falconer told him. “The merchant has gauged you as just another spoiled son of a rich banker. Did you explain that your father has sent you down on a fact-finding mission, with me as your father’s aide?”
“I implied it was punishment for foul deeds,” Bernard replied softly. “Alas, I have all too much practice at the speech and the manner.”
From the horse’s other side, Nebo observed, “The merchant wishes to pluck you like his very own goose. He will protect you with his life.”
“And explain your presence to officials in the fortress, if anyone asks,” Falconer added.
“He has sent his servant to obtain rooms for me in the city’s finest inn.” Bernard pointed to the opposite promenade. “Over there.”
“Let us take the long way,” Falconer said.
They were being watched, Falconer was certain. In such lands all strangers were spied upon. Falconer forced himself neither to flinch nor turn away as they passed the stone-lined arena. The stench rising from the empty sunlit stones was both fierce and all too familiar. The market now housed a small contingency of armed men on one side, their animals on the other. The soldiers sprawled about a campfire and paused their game of dice long enough to observe the quartet’s passage.
Bernard asked, “Why are the boats crammed together so?”
The outer harbor contained only six vessels. The interior harbor, however, was so tightly packed Falconer could have walked from one side of the port to the other using the boats as a bridge.
“They fear the ship’s guns,” Falconer explained.
“What distance does a hundred paces make?”
Nebo said, “The inner harbor places them within the shadow of the fortress walls. They think your ship would not risk hitting La Rue’s castle with its cannon.”
The square’s tightest point was where the fortress wall jutted out, making a stone boundary between the slave market and the eastern promenade. Thirty paces on they passed the fortress’s main gates. Falconer made what he hoped would appear to be a casual inspection.
His gut quaked at this first examination. The gates had been rebuilt to form a killing ground.
These new gates were set back from the main wall. The recess was eighty paces across and paved in mosaic tile worn almost colorless. The fortress wall formed three sides of an open square. From the ramparts warriors could pour a devastating amount of fire onto any would-be attacker. The gates themselves were forty feet high and the same in breadth. Three guards stood to either side of the open doorway. More guards stood along the upper wall. A crowd of petitioners waited patiently in front of the guard station.
The small group turned away and started down the promenade. A wind blew steadily off the sea, erasing the market’s last lingering traces. Bernard asked, “Why are there not more soldiers?”
“Do you not have eyes?” Nebo said. “Armed men are everywhere.”
But Falconer understood the question. “This is a pirate stronghold. His men are not trained for wearing uniforms and standing on sentry duty. They fight for gold.”
The merchant’s servant came rushing toward them, calling loudly and gesticulating toward an inn midway up the promenade. Falconer and Nebo stepped back, permitting the servant to take their station by Bernard’s horse.
When five paces separated them from the pair, Nebo asked, “Will it work, this plan of yours?”
Falconer did not respond until they had halted before the inn. He then made a slow circular inspection of his surroundings, burning the square into his memory. The inns, the castle, the market, the merchants.
The port.
Falconer turned to the African and said, “You know what to do.”
Nebo salaamed, his muscles gleaming in the sun. “It will be as you say.”
They were committed.
The afternoon was spent in secret urgency. There was nothing odd about servants using the infamous Carthage market to stock up on supplies for a desert crossing. Tripoli was, after all, a full six days’ march. And that was where they were headed, or so Nebo complained to all who cared to ask. Driven eastward to the Egyptian port by a spoiled dandy whose father sought to harden his youngest child. No worry given to the poor charges whose sweat would ease the boy’s way. For boy he was, Nebo grumbled time and again. A child whose loss would be missed by only one man.
So the three men went from stall to stall. The silent Arab and the tall African and the wizened English sailor who spoke neither Arabic nor French. Buying desert provisions here, dates and twice-baked bread and congealed coconut oil and ground chickpeas mixed with lemon and olive oil. At the next stall they bought two small casks of whale oil, the cleanest burning oil for lamps, while the African groused over good money wasted on orders which made no sense, for who would bother with a reading lamp in the desert night? Which of course would draw every bandit for miles. Which then meant stocking up on powder for their guns. And waterskins, of necessity, enough for an army. Plus a quarter league of good hemp rope, to keep man and beast together in the storms that would no doubt plague them the entire trek. The market holders laughed and groaned sympathetically at the African’s antics, and salaamed the fools from one stall to the next. For the dandy’s men paid for everything in good English gold.
Bernard and Falconer were on a mission of their own, the dandy riding his horse the entire way around the town’s center, pausing here and there to buy nonsensical items, with Falconer in attendance on foot. Falconer did not complain aloud. But his scowl was enough to silence both beggars and all but the hardiest of merchants. The dandy purchased a shawl with silver baubles for a woman back in France. A flask of myrrh, which cost more than a mule. All of which was to be sent to the tavern in the city’s poorer section, back where his servants resided. It took the dandy more than three hours to circle the fortress, by which time the entire city knew of the spoiled young man who let gold drip through his fingers. No matter that the slaver who guarded the dandy complained in nasty tones about the father and the trouble they would have crossing the desert with these items. His master spent and spent and spent. Of course he was welcome. His appearance at each alley brought cries of delight from the merchants, who flipped open chests and plucked out their most valued treasures. The merchants whose wares were chosen tried to hide their mirth at his foolishness behind their hands, and often failed.
Falconer had forgotten just how fast a desert sunset came and went. One moment the golden orb floated in a vessel of cloudless blue. The desert dust, lifted by the day’s heat, briefly became a mystical veil. Then the light simply vanished. The sun dropped below the horizon with the speed of a snuffed candle. Darkness conquered. Stars emerged. The temperature dropped. That was another lesson he had forgotten—how cold the desert furnace swiftly became without its source of heat.
He ate a solitary meal in the tavern’s front room. When the beached slaver Klein entered with his menacing mate, Falconer ordered the innkeeper to feed them again. No drink. Klein accepted the gift with a grin and pretended no offense at Falconer’s decline of company. Falconer toyed over his final cup of mint tea, idly watching the constant stream of traffic. Finally his worry could be held back no longer. He rose from the table, ignored the innkeeper’s salaam, and hurried around back.
Soap was in the same position as he had been left, leaning easy against the stall’s gate. To anyone who passed the alley, he was merely another guard lolling through wasted hours. But there was only one way in or out of this rear hold. Which meant Soap’s keen eye was enough to protect the others from prying eyes.
Given what they were doing, this was essential.
Wadi was off playing guard to Bernard, who fretted that his role kept him far from the action. The others, Nebo and the three former whalers, worked with quiet frantic haste.
Falconer leaned against the wall by Soap. He gave the yard and the walls and the alley and the tavern a careful inspection. The kitchen’s rear door was rimmed by a wall intended to keep out beggars. This wall had a second door, but Soap had jammed the lever with a stick, such that they would be warned by anyone wishing to come or go. In any case, the tent’s side wall shielded the four men from any who did not actually walk over. Satisfied with their security, Falconer asked, “What does your nose tell you?”
“Same as it did the last time you asked,” Soap replied. “There’s a big storm brewing.”
Falconer sniffed hard, but for once his senses refused to obey. All he could smell was dust.
“Surprised you even have to ask,” Soap went on.
“I’m too worried over what’s about to happen,” Falconer confessed.
“Which is why I’m not worried at all. Confident as ever I’ve been.”
Falconer felt the knot in his gut ease somewhat. “We need that blow.”
“Just beyond the horizon, it is. You wait and see.”
Wind and no rain. Everything depended upon that combination. “Be ready to move.”
“Been ready,” Soap rejoined. “Been ready since the hour before sunset. Go see to your charges and leave off with the fretting, that’s my advice.”
Falconer slipped around the tent to where four men crouched in the dust. By the light of the yard’s only torch, he watched the men at work. Nebo and Sands and the two other whalers were surrounded by their gear and a growing pile of finished product. Sands’ younger brother held a skin as the man named Bert filled it from the cask of whale oil. Nebo was adding gunpowder to the mix. Between them and Sands were several rags glistening with oil and flecked with yet more powder.
“Have you eaten?” Falconer asked.
“Aye, Skipper. Haven’t been this full since I don’t know when.” Sands did not pause in his motions. Nor did he smile. But Falconer could sense a new lightness to the man.
“How much longer?”
“Few minutes more should see us done here.”
Falconer cast a glance behind him, then crouched down beside them. He hefted one of the packed water- skins. “Tell me again what I need to do.”
“Not much to it.” Sands pointed at the rags crammed into the skin’s mouth. “Jam that end into your tinderbox and run.”
“What if the wind comes up?”
“Long as your tinderbox holds a flame, the plan should work fine. There’s more powder in them rags than oil, and they’re soaked with oil right through.” Sands used a dagger to jam the rag into another waterskin, tightening it down to where the skin would not leak. “Your only worry is about getting away before this thing lights up the night.”
Falconer checked everything one final time, then said, “It is my habit to pray before setting off.”
Nebo gave a solemn nod. “I be glad to hear words between you and your God.”
As Falconer crouched down beside the men, Soap stepped back to where he could both be a member of the group and keep an eye on the alley. Falconer said, “In the book of Ephesians, we are told to put on the armor of God. That we may withstand the evil day, we must wear the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation, shod our feet with the gospel of peace, and carry before us the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit. We must do these things so that we can speak boldly and be an ambassador of eternal truth.”
Falconer felt five sets of eyes upon him as he settled his back against the rough stone wall. “When the apostle Paul wrote these words, he went on to describe himself as a man who shared their plight. To me, this is a deep confession. Paul does not speak as one who has left behind human woes. Paul is both free and not free. Just as I am. I am a believer and thus a new man. And I still am crippled by the woes of this world. God has often seemed very far from me.”
One of the men supposedly chained to the central pillar coughed. Or it might have been a choking sob. Falconer did not look up to see. He went on, speaking to the dust at his feet. “On some days, the prayers of my mouth have not resonated in my heart. But does this mean I fail? Have I lost my hold on God? I find my answer here, in the words of a teacher who is also chained. Does he wear physical chains? Is he ill? Whatever the external issue, I think Paul is also weighed down by his internal failings. He says, Brothers, I speak to you not as one who has once been where you are. No. I am there with you
now
.”
Falconer found the courage to lift his gaze. “No matter what may befall me this night, still I know. Not think. Not hope. I
know
. That come the day I leave this earth, I will enter my eternal home. The glorious door has been opened for me, as sinful a man as ever has lived, by Christ. Who died for me. That I might live. Forever. In God’s glorious presence.”
He let the words hang in the dry and dusty air. The torch crackled from the iron stand overhead. The market noises drifted back from the alley. But here in this space, the world seemed far away.
Falconer asked softly, “Who will pray with me this night?”
The six of them knelt together. In the dust of a corral that had harbored misery beyond time, they joined together. A former slave, a slaver, a seaman, and three still bound by earthly chains. Falconer prayed words he scarcely heard. He knew he spoke. He knew at least two of the men wept, perhaps more. But a sensation filled him, one so strong the sounds could not penetrate.
God was with him still.
When he was done, a silence held them all. Falconer remained there upon his knees, reluctant to release the moment and return to the dust of life.
Soap rose to his feet. He took a pair of steps from the group. A moment passed. Then he said quietly, “Ho, the wind.”
Falconer rose to stand behind the older seaman. Not satisfied, he walked down the alley. Beside the tavern’s entrance, the wind was much stronger. Lanterns illuminated the first whirlwind, as tight as a man-sized fist.
Falconer went back to where Nebo was lashing the final skins to the pack mule. Falconer tested the knots himself. Satisfied, he said, “We move.”