Chapter Twenty-Four
Nazim Pasha was here.
He would discover her, if he hadn’t already guessed, and abduct her in front of Foye and everyone else. Foye would try to stop him, and the pasha would kill him. Without remorse. She swallowed hard and tried to relax on her mount. So far no one but Asif and possibly Barton knew who she was. Why would the pasha suspect her when he was looking for an Englishwoman?
There was a ringing silence in the courtyard. Asif confronted one of the pasha’s Janissaries, and the two now stood across from each other, glaring at one another. The soldier had his musket leveled at Asif’s heart. In the hush, thirty or more men filled the courtyard, all of them armed Janissaries. About half stayed mounted, blocking the exit. The rest rode forward, behind the pasha. One of them carried the two spears with their tails signifying the pasha’s rank.
Nazim Pasha continued his leisurely ride into the courtyard, heading toward Foye. Was this what it had been like for the Mameluks in Cairo? Had they, too, faced this infinite silence before the attack that took their lives?
Foye’s personal guard came to attention. The Druze captain of his Janissaries pulled his rifle from his back and kicked his stallion until he was just ahead of Foye. The other Janissaries did the same. All around her, she heard the sound of weapons being released and readied. It occurred to her that, as Pathros, she ought to do the same, but Foye reached over and stopped her.
“Stay calm,” he murmured. “You are Pathros, my dragoman, not a soldier. Keep the pistol at hand, though.”
Nazim Pasha emerged from among his Janissaries. The handle of the bejeweled pistol protruding from his sash glittered with refracted light. Upon reaching Foye, he made an elaborate bow, a mockery of the European custom.
“Marquis,” he said in French. “Good morning.”
“Pasha.” He held his pistol down, across his lap. “I confess,” he replied in the same language, “I am astonished to see you here.”
“Perhaps we might call for coffee and refreshments,” the pasha said with a nod of his head in the direction of the khan.
“Forgive me,” Foye said. “I have a long journey ahead of me and don’t wish to be delayed.”
“You cannot conduct your business here? Cannot Mr. Barker assist you in gathering the funds you need?”
Foye shrugged one shoulder. “In the amount required, no. I’m afraid the bulk of my monies are held in Iskenderun That’s two days hard riding at best. Three if we’re delayed.”
The pasha’s gaze swept the men surrounding Foye, dark eyes moving constantly, searching. Sabine concentrated on breathing evenly. He would look past her. She was Pathros, a young Christian boy, an infidel of no interest to Nazim Pasha. Her palms were sweating, her back cold with fear.
Nazim Pasha gestured and one of his Janissaries immediately rode to his side. In Arabic, he told the mercenary to take some men and search the interior of the building for the Englishwoman. Her. With a sense of the world being out of its natural order, Sabine understood the Pasha meant her. He was sending soldiers inside to search for an Englishwoman. And that meant he did not suspect her.
The Janissary nodded and wheeled around in the now crowded space. While Foye watched him gather companions, Sabine leaned over to translate.
“We have had a hard journey from Kilis, Marquis,” the pasha said. “You and I have a great deal to discuss.”
Foye leaned forward, one hand propped up on his hard-muscled thigh. He glanced in the direction of the khan. “I assume Miss Godard is well?”
The pasha stroked his mustache. On each of his fingers was a ring of some precious stone. Not that his choice in jewelry would prevent him from firing his pistol, or ordering someone else to do so, for that matter. “I am unable to say,” he said.
“Is she not in Kilis?” Foye said. “I was under the impression that she was to enjoy your hospitality until I returned with her ransom. Surely, Pasha, you haven’t lost her, have you?”
“I would have been delighted to entertain her for as long as she was pleased to be my guest.” He urged his horse forward, closer to Foye. Close enough that a gun shot would not miss. “But she disappeared, Marquis. The very morning you departed.”
“Really?” Foye said. He looked and sounded bored. “That is unfortunate. However, it seems to me you had misplaced her before my arrival. If you’ll recall, she was not available at any time during my visit. I never saw so much as a glimpse of her. I am indeed distressed to learn you could not keep one insignificant woman under your control. This is a quite serious matter, as I am sure you know. I hope you notified the authorities the moment you discovered her missing.”
“I assure you I did. And, who, may I ask, is that behind you?” the pasha asked.
Foye turned, as if wondering the same. “Do you mean him? My dragoman.” Sabine saw Foye slip the trigger lock on his pistol, and her pulse beat so fast and so hard she could barely hear.
Nazim Pasha addressed Sabine directly, in French. “Do you speak French, boy? What is your name?”
Heart in her throat, she looked at Foye for direction, by pure luck stumbling onto the very reaction Pathros was most likely to have. Foye, she recalled, had told her what to do. She was not to speak French, but she may already have ruined everything merely by paying attention too closely. Had the pasha guessed she understood?
“He doesn’t,” Foye replied, still in French.
“This is not the dragoman you brought with you to Kilis,” the pasha said.
Sabine tried to stay relaxed, but my God, her heart was going to burst. Someone inside the khan shouted. You do not speak French, she told herself. She must appear as if not a word of this made sense to her.
“No,” Foye said. “I bid that one to stay with my valet during the removal from Kilis. He’s just here.” His hand was steady as he gestured in the direction of Nabil. “My valet does not speak a word of the local language. He needed someone to tell him what was going on. I hired this one”—he nodded at Sabine—“when we came through Aleppo yesterday.”
“You, boy, what is your name?” the pasha demanded of her in rapid French.
Just in time, Sabine remembered to look at Foye, who smiled at her—his blood must be ice. Her pulse pounded in her ears, and she prayed the pasha interpreted her fear as only natural to the tension of the encounter.
In English, Foye said with utter calm, “Nazim Pasha would like to know your name. Please oblige him with an answer.”
She cleared her throat, and it was a wonder she could speak at all. “Pathros,” she said. The word came out roughly, and she had to clear her throat afterward. Her mouth was bone dry. She bowed to him. “Pasha.”
Nazim Pasha brought his horse around to her. He moved in close enough to jostle Foye’s stallion, who objected and would have bitten the pasha’s mount had Foye not pulled hard on the reins. The pasha turned his mount sideways and stared at her with his dark, dark eyes full of suspicion. He wondered, Sabine thought as terror slid down her spine. His eyes slid up and down her body, taking in the clothes, her complexion, searching, she was convinced, for womanly curves. She knew her face was probably still dirty. The clothes weren’t hers; her hair was gone. She was Pathros. Pathros. She didn’t dare breath. Thank God, thank God, Foye had bound her tightly this morning.
In Turkish, the pasha said, “How long have you worked for the Englishman, infidel?”
“Do please translate your conversation, Pathros,” Foye said with a lazy gesture in her direction.
Sabine didn’t have to pretend to be nervous. It wasn’t hard at all to appear to be a nervous young Christian boy who was all too aware that a pasha could have him beaten for no reason other than that it amused him to do so. She made the translation into English before answering the pasha in Turkish. “Since late yesterday, Pasha.” She repeated her answer in English for Foye.
“Did he, at any time,” the pasha continued in Turkish, “have a woman with him? An Englishwoman?”
Sabine translated the question for Foye and then gave her answer in English before she replied to the pasha in Turkish. Her dry mouth made her voice scratchy, and she did her best to keep the tone lower than her natural speaking voice. “No, Pasha.” She bobbed her head, touching her forehead. “I never saw an Englishwoman with Lord Foye. Perhaps one of the others saw something I did not?”
The pasha laughed, and Foye tightened his grip on his pistol. The pasha’s Janissaries came out of the khan.
Without an Englishwoman and with no reports of anyone inside having seen Foye in the company of any woman.
“Then you have lost her.” Foye shook his head. “That is unfortunate.”
“I think when you return from Iskenderun you will find she’s been enjoying my hospitality all this time.” Nazim Pasha addressed Foye again in his exquisite French. “Awaiting the day when she may return home to the bosom of her family.”
“You do not want England to be your enemy. And that,” he said, “is what you will have if Miss Godard is not returned to me safely.”
“I wonder at your interest in the woman,” the pasha said.
“You might have succeeded in convincing the authorities to look the other way when you were arranging to kidnap an innocent young woman.” Foye stared him straight in the eye. “All you need to know, Nazim Pasha, is that Sabine Godard was never without a man’s protection. I am not an invalid with no influence here. No matter how often you dine with the Consuls here in Aleppo or Constantinople, the fact remains that I am not an Englishman you can trifle with. If I return to Kilis, Pasha, and find Miss Godard is not with you, safe and sound, and ready to leave with me, I will bring the might of England down on you, so help me God, I shall.”
The pasha stood unmoving for quite a while. At last, though, he bowed to Foye. “God’s will be done,” he said. He gestured to several of his Janissaries. “You will be pleased to know I have many more men assisting me in looking after her. And since she is so well cared for in Kilis, please allow me to be certain that you return safely from Iskenderun,” the pasha said. “With all the money required.”
“Oh, I shall return,” Foye said.
Nazim Pasha smiled. “My men and I will accompany you to Iskenderun and back.” He lifted a hand. “I insist. It is the least I can do to assure your safety.”
“And what of the safety of Miss Godard?” Foye asked.
“My men will continue to protect her. My servants will spend every hour of their day seeing to her entertainment. Never fear in that regard, Marquis. When she is at last returned to you, she will regale you with all the tales of her pleasures.”
Foye stowed his pistol “Come along if you wish. But don’t slow me down, Pasha. I won’t wait for you.”
Nazim Pasha merely smiled in return.
Foye swore under his breath. He leaned to Sabine and said in a low voice, “Stay close to me at all times. And keep your weapon at hand.” His mouth gave a wry twist. “If you can toss out a few obscenities or curses in some other language from time to time, do so.”
She bowed her head to him as she had to the pasha. “My lord.”
For Sabine, the next quarter of an hour passed in a blur. She relayed Foye’s instructions to his men about when they might expect to leave and did her best to stay far away from the pasha while he informed his Janissaries of his change in plan. Five of them were to stay behind and continue searching for the Englishwoman. Another five were dispatched to procure supplies sufficient for the trek to Iskenderun and back; they were to catch up to the main group as soon as possible. The remaining men, thirty at least stayed with the pasha.
Before noon, they were heading out. They made a considerable party as they rode to the city limits. Dogs chased after them until they reached the outskirts of Aleppo. A few of the dogs pursued them onto the rocky plain, but eventually even the most persistent cur gave up.
They continued west on the Iskenderun road into the Nur Mountains, faced with the seventy or eighty miles that stretched between here and the Syrian Gates, the narrow mountain gap that was the only passage to the port city of Iskenderun and the Mediterranean.
About noon, she and Foye ate a breakfast of nuts, cheese, and dry bread washed down with a mouthful of water, on horseback. By mid-afternoon, they’d left the plains that surrounded Aleppo and the northern province for the eastern side of the foothills. The arduous climb through the mountains had begun. For the most part, the pasha stayed back with his men. But it was clear to her and Foye both that the pasha suspected Foye had arranged for Sabine to meet him on the Iskenderun road, and that he had deployed his men accordingly, so as to intercept any secondary party.
Long before there was any hope of seeing a sunset, Sabine had a pounding headache from the heat and the constant reflection off the white stones everywhere one looked. If they ate, it was bread and cheese consumed while mounted, with a mouthful of stale water to wash it down. During their few stops, Sabine snuck off to relieve herself in private, often using her horse as a barrier. Once or twice she saw the pasha watching her, but his gaze was dismissive rather than curious. She’d learned to stand with her legs apart, arms over her chest, and if she walked, by God, she had bollocks.
The Janissaries of both men, Foye’s and the pasha’s, made coffee during their stops, brewed hot and thick and sweet. The Druze captain made Foye’s coffee. He seemed to take it as a point of honor. Another of the Druze soldiers made hers. It was possible, she had heard, for a native traveling with coffee-making paraphernalia to journey for hours on very little sleep. If she was right about Foye’s determination to reach Iskenderun as quickly as possibly, they were about to put that tale to the test.
The invigorating effects of the coffee they’d consumed during their last stop had worn off and still they rode on, winding higher into the mountains. Hours in the saddle became a painful reminder of each and every muscle in her body. She was sore and tired and very put out that Foye, who hadn’t slept any more than she had, wasn’t showing signs of dropping off to sleep in his saddle. He might at least have the decency to look ragged around the edges. And he didn’t, even though he hadn’t slept any more than she had the night before. Like many of the others, she kept a cloth wrapped around her face so that only her eyes showed.
About an hour before dusk, Nazim Pasha joined Foye, engaging him in conversation, again in French. Nothing very interesting. To be sure she did not give away her comprehension, she dropped back and let the two men ride ahead. Once or twice as they talked, Foye laughed.
The pasha’s presence plunged Sabine into a world where everything was topsy-turvy. She was not Miss Sabine Godard. She was Pathros, a Christian ethnic Nazim, employed as dragoman to an English lord. She did not speak French and, therefore, understood nothing of what Foye and the pasha were saying. Aside from her facility with Turkish and Arabic, she was unimportant. Her function was to translate for her employer whenever required. Nothing more.
They rode on. Her lower body was numb, her knees in permanent agony from the short stirrups of her high-backed native saddle. Her spine and shoulders were a mass of permanently contracted muscles. Someone was hammering nails into her head. As often as she could she rode with her eyes closed. But, though her mare was sure-footed, the terrain was treacherous, and there were times Sabine had no choice but to watch the way, if only to prevent herself from being pitched over the mare’s head.
They kept riding. Without cease and without conversation or remark on the sights. They passed two Bedouin men, tall and wrapped in dark red cloth, so at home on their horses that they seemed one and the same creature. The Bedouin were known for their ferocity and for having no qualms over attacking Europeans or anyone else. Despite government claims to the contrary, the Bedouin were not well controlled. They did as they pleased when they pleased to whom they pleased. All the Janissaries paid more attention to their surroundings for several hours after the encounter.
When, at last, the sun was disappearing behind the mountains, they rounded a corner of the path, and there, as if presented to them as a gift, just a few yards off the road stood a small khan. Camels lay in the sandy dirt in front and to the side. An Arab boy kept watch over tethered asses and mules. Inside, there would be cool water and respite from the heat. There would be food other than crumbling bread and stale tea; there would be lovely hot tea and a place to lay down her head.
The closer they came, the more fervently she imagined herself sliding into a bath and washing away the dirt and grime of all their days traveling. Heaven. Foye and the pasha were the first to come even with the turn to the khan, but they passed by the entrance without slowing.
Foye signaled to her to ride beside him. When she pulled even with him, he said, “I need a favor.”