The man in front led the ponies straight to the back and disappeared. Then the ponies’ heads disappeared. James realized they were going round a wall of rock into a chamber beyond. No one simply glancing into the cave would notice the concealed passage or guess that the shallow, empty cave hid a den of thieves.
James stopped, blinded, as he passed from sunlight into dark. The gun-barrel instantly poked him in the back and he moved forward again, his eyes adjusting to lamplight.
The single lamp left burning on a broken stalagmite illuminated only a fraction of the inner cavern. Listening to the echo of their footsteps and the clop of the ponies’ hooves, James reckoned it was huge. Somewhere water trickled and plopped. The vast, chill, impenetrable blackness made the nearest corner with its rugs and cushions and sooty hearth seem almost homey.
The first man led the two ponies off to the right, tethered them, and took off their saddles. As James gently lowered Cordelia onto a rug, the rest of the band of brigands filed in with their doughty steeds. They brought all the baskets and bundles taken from the donkey, even the pack-saddle and Cordelia’s shawl and kerchief. With a challenging look, James retrieved the shawl from the heap and wrapped it about her shivering shoulders.
She gave him a pitiful smile. “Do you think the poor donkey will be all right?”
“I expect he will find his way home. They’re clever beasts, even if we humans tend to use them as a model of stupidity. How are you feeling?”
“A bit better now. It hurts to breathe.”
“Don’t I know it! Bruised ribs, but that’s the least of our worries, I’m afraid.”
“They will kill us, won’t they? We know their hiding-place.”
A quick death was the best they—or at least she—could hope for, James thought grimly. He wondered whether he might provoke their captors into shooting them, by grabbing one of their guns, perhaps. But the muskets were stacked over by the ponies. In the unlikely case he reached them without being stopped, they would kill him long before he could return to Cordelia, leaving her at their mercy.
“It is like Ali Baba’s cave, in the Thousand and One Nights,” she said, a hint of wonder in her tone.
James looked around. One of the brigands had lit more lamps while another fetched wood and built a fire on the ashes in the makeshift hearth. The added light revealed brass-bound chests, casks, wine-jars, sacks, bales of silk and brocade, the booty of the bandits’ raids on merchant caravans. The grimy carpets they sat on were of the finest Persian make. The bandit chief, when he came over to them, was drinking from a chased silver tankard with an elaborate handle.
Setting it down, he growled, “Let’s have your purses.”
As he weighed the leather pouches in his hands, the others gathered round. Several of them were young men in peasant dress, no different from any to be found tilling the fields but for the gleam of excitement in their eyes. Four older men, including the chief, wore clothes which would not have disgraced the richest merchant had they been clean and well-kept rather than filthy and torn.
“This is the gems,” said the chief. “Too light to be gold.” He sat down cross-legged and emptied Cordelia’s purse on the rug.
A groan of disappointment rose as her few remaining coins rolled about. Angrily the chief emptied James’s hoard. The glint of gold pleased his followers, but he scattered the coins with his fingers, hunting for diamonds.
“Not here. We’ll have to search their baggage.”
“Time we was getting back to work,” one of the young men said reluctantly. “We’ll be missed.”
“If them diamonds ain’t a pipe dream, you won’t need to work much longer.”
“My cousin wouldn’t make up a story like that,” said another of the peasant lads, injured.
“He’ll be sorry if he did. You be off then. Come back at dusk. You’ll get your share of the loot and you can take the bodies to dump in the river.”
“Don’t knock the wife on the head till we’ve had our share of the fun, too. I kind of fancy that yellow hair.”
“We’ll keep her alive for you, never fear.”
James glanced at Cordelia. He knew her grasp of Greek had vastly improved over the past few days and he feared she might have understood their plans for her, if she had not already guessed. However, though still pale and frightened, she looked no more appalled by their situation than before.
“They know about the diamonds,” she whispered, as the younger men led out their ponies, “and they think I’m your wife, don’t they? Someone in the village must have told them.”
He nodded. An idea began to germinate in his mind, a possible way to save her from degradation before death.
She watched the remaining brigands start to search the baggage. “They will be furious when they cannot find the diamonds. I’ll explain that I have them and hand them over.” As she spoke, she stood up and took a step towards the men.
“Wait!” said James, jumping up as he realized what she was about, too late.
One man grabbed her and two seized James by the arms.
“Better tie ‘em up,” grunted the chief.
“That’s not necessary,” James protested.
“Wouldn’t be, maybe, if you could keep your wife in order.”
“She’s not my wife.” He saw Cordelia wince as her hands were wrenched behind her back and her wrists bound. Lord, he hoped she wouldn’t understand what he was about to say!
“That’s what I heard,” the brigand said, uninterested.
“We’ve been travelling as man and wife. It’s easier that way. But she’s really my doxy.”
“Don’t make no matter to me.”
“Oh, but it does. When I say she’s my doxy I don’t mean she’s my bed-mate.” He attempted to smirk as a stout cord tightened painfully around his ankles. He was trussed like a chicken, dammit. “Leastways, not any longer. I sell her services, and believe me, with her looks I was onto a good thing.”
The brigand chief showed no sign of contempt at James’s revelation that he was a pimp. “High-price whore is she? All the better. P’raps she’ll show us a trick or two afore we wring her neck.” Then James’s words registered. “What d’ya mean, you was onto a good thing? And why not any longer?”
“Disaster struck. She caught the Persian pox.”
“Persian pox? What’s that?”
He lowered his voice dramatically. “A horrible disease, like the plague and leprosy rolled into one, only worse. It don’t show in a woman, not for years and years, but in a man the symptoms come out in just a week or two.”
All four men stared at him, mouths agape. “W-what happens?” one gasped.
“First sign’s when your balls turn blue. Well, sort of purplish. Then the colour creeps slowly down your prick and up your belly till it comes to your belly button. That’s when it starts to change to black, and you piss black, and your balls swell up big as a pig’s bladder. At the same time, your prick begins to wither like a dead vine. And when it’s all withered, it falls off.”
“Aargh!”
“And then you die?” breathed the chief, shuddering.
“Some do. It’s the one’s that don’t I’m sorry for.” Though proud of his command of colloquial—not to say vulgar—modern Greek, James decided it was best not to embroider on that statement. “Like the pasha who was her last customer. That’s why we had to hop it from Istanbul in a hurry, only the bastard sent the Janissaries after us.” A nice touch of the truth, there.
“Taki’s cousin said the Turks arrested them, chief.”
“That’s right. They caught us when we were peacefully on our way to find customers some place where we’re not known.”
“Why are you warning us?” demanded the chief suspiciously.
“I thought you might be grateful and let us go, seeing we can’t afford to peach to the authorities.”
“Ho, you did, did you? Think again. What’s to stop you telling someone else where to find us and leaving it to them to peach? No, dead men tell no tales, that’s my motto. Nor dead poxy whores, neither.” With a malevolent glance at Cordelia, he turned away. “It’s going to take a while to go through this lot properly.”
They dumped the contents of the bundles on the floor and on their knees started searching through the heaps of clothes, running their fingers along every seam.
“What did you tell them?” Cordelia asked James. She lay curled on her side, her eyes huge and dark in the lamplight.
“I hoped if they knew about the Turks chasing us, they’d realize they could safely let us go, but no such luck,” he said regretfully. By gad, they wouldn’t be raping her though, he exulted. It wasn’t worth the risk, even if they doubted his fantastical tale. The farrago of nonsense had scared them half out of their wits. He could not quite suppress a smile.
“If they are determine to kill us why are you grinning?”
Some day when she was being annoyingly prudish he’d tell her—if they survived, which seemed impossible. Perhaps the story would serve to take her thoughts off their imminent fate. He had not quite made up his mind when running footsteps sounded in the outer cave.
One of the peasant lads appeared, panting. “The Turks!” he cried. “They’re coming! Taki’s dead and they’ve nabbed the others. You’ve a chance, but hurry!”
As the brigands sprang to their feet, he swung round and raced out again.
James watched with bated breath as the four men sped to grab their muskets. If they chose to they could easily withstand a siege, which their captives would undoubtedly not live through.
But they cut their ponies tethers and hustled them out of the cavern, shouting as they got in each other’s way. A moment later, the drumming of hooves faintly penetrated through the outer cave.
And then gunfire.
James wriggled across the rugs till he could briefly touch Cordelia’s cheek with his in a gesture of comfort. “While there’s life there’s hope,” he said.
“Out of the frying pan into the fire,” she retorted.
“Come now, even the pasha’s bed must be preferable to a knock on the head followed by drowning in the nearest river. Or perhaps they will not find us.”
“In which case we shall starve quietly to death, unless your bonds are looser than mine.”
“They are devilish tight,” James admitted. “Hush, someone is coming.”
A man stepped into the cavern and paused to regard the scene. The Janissary’s tall headdress was unmistakable. So was the glint of lamplight on the pistol in his hand.
“Well, well, well, fancy meeting you again,” said Captain Hamid, transferring his pistol to his left hand. “I shall be happy to report finding you dead at the hands of the bandits.” He drew his yataghan.
Chapter 16
Cordelia stared up at the soldier, wondering whether having one’s throat slit by a Turkish sword was a less painful way to die than being hit on the head and drowned. The diamonds, she thought frantically. She could bribe him—no, he could easily strip them from her dead body.
“Anyone else in here?” he asked, peering into the heavy darkness.
“No, they’re all gone,” said James cheerfully. What did he see to be cheerful about? “Like rats deserting a sinking ship.”
“My men will take them.” Captain Hamid holstered his pistol as he approached. “This time we weren’t the ones caught napping.”
“How did you find this place?”
“We were on patrol on the road down there.” He waved his yataghan at the cave entrance, then bent down towards Cordelia.
She tensed, only to catch her breath on a sob of relief as he sliced through the knotted cords around her ankles.
Turning to perform the same service for James, Hamid continued, “We knew the brigands had a hiding place somewhere nearby. I’d like to claim cleverness, but it was by Allah’s will I happened to look this way through my spy-glass just as they carried you up the hill. Four people and two ponies disappeared into what I had been told was a very small cave, followed by another six or seven men and as many ponies.”
“Aha, you said to yourself, something fishy there. I say, my dear fellow, it might be a good idea to use a smaller blade to free our wrists. Were you looking for us?”
“Yes.” He sheathed his sword and drew a knife. “The Greeks took you north and west. You wish to go south to Athens, and this is the only good north-south road. Meess Courtenay, if you will please roll over so that your hands are in the light, I shall be less likely to draw blood. That is good.”
She felt the strands part one by one, cold steel against her skin, then the painful throb of blood returning to her veins. Her arms were free. She sat up and chafed her wrists, thankful they had not been tied for more than a few minutes.
“Thank you, Captain,” she said as he freed James.
“My pleasure, Bayan. Now we must make plans before my men return. These are your goods?” He gestured at the tumbled heaps of clothes, the baskets and rolled blankets, and the coins strewn on the rugs. “You must move them further into the cave, out of the light and well away from the robbers’ treasure.”
“You’ll be taking that with you, I suppose?” said James, taking one of the lamps and moving off into the darkness.
“Yes, I must have evidence against the brigands, and there will be a reward for me and my men. Whatever can be identified will be returned to the owners—those who ran off fast enough when they were attacked. However, if that is all the money you have left, you had best fill your purses.” He crossed to a pile of small leather sacks, opened one, and grunted with satisfaction. “Here, Meess Courtenay. This will help you on your way.”
“Thank you, Captain, you are very kind. But I don’t know how we are going to carry all our stuff.”
“There is a donkey outside. Is it not yours?”
“A donkey! James,” she called towards the distant light, bobbing among stalagmites and stalactites, “the donkey must have followed us. I’m so glad, I was worried about it.”
“You have a good heart, Bayan. I shall try to leave a pony or two, but our own pack-horses cannot carry all this treasure, so it depends upon how many of the brigands we take prisoner and how many we leave to feed the buzzards.”
Returning without the lamp, James said cheerfully, “Speaking of which, are you going to need to show your men our dead bodies?”
Hamid grinned. “They must see something. When you have moved your baggage, go right to the edge of the circle of light, where it grows dim. Lie down flat on your backs and pull a rug over you, faces and all, as if I had covered you. Meess Courtenay, try to arrange your beautiful hair so that it shows. This will convince them of your identity, inshallah. It is fortunate that you are infidels. They will not think it sinful to leave you to the wolves instead of taking your bodies for proper burial.”