Chapter Thirty-Seven
At first, Sophia thought she was dreaming. She was aboard the Calliope once more and felt the now familiar motion of the ship as it surged through the waves. She kept her eyes closed and listened. Her limbs were heavy, weighted by deep lethargy. She felt disinclined to move them, so she listened, waiting for the voices of the men she had come to know so well to make themselves clear.
She waited and her heart tumbled a few beats, aware of something her conscious mind had not yet considered. The sound of the waves moving past the hull near her head were too regular, too rhythmic, to be natural. Now her heart kept time with the beating of a drum audible over the sound of the sea.
It wasn’t the Calliope.
Her heart hammered in her chest, desperate to wake up her body. Panic replaced the air that rightfully belonged in her lungs. She emerged from the remains of her unnatural slumber with a heaving gasp and opened her eyes to heavy shadows. The cabin in which she lay was lit only by one deck light. There was no porthole.
She raised a fist to rub sleep from her eyes, and her arm struggled to support itself. The limb shook and dropped to the thin mattress on which she lay. She tried again and met with success.
The smell of incense, thick and sweet, blocked her nostrils to everything else; not even the salty tang of the sea could penetrate. She found her feet with great effort and stumbled, barefooted, to the door, desperate to fill her lungs with fresh air. Pinpricks of tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away and twisted the knob. It didn’t move. Sophia tried again more forcefully but it only moved an eighth of a turn.
Locked. She was locked in a small cabin with no air, being transported God knows where. Samuel! Where was Samuel?
Kit!
Sophia closed her eyes, and she recalled every feature – his bright, blond hair, hazel eyes shot with green and blue, sensuous lips, his lithe, muscular form kissed by the sun. In her mind, he was perfect, like the ancient Greek statues she had had the pleasure to touch. But marble was cold. Kit Hardacre had been flesh and blood, human and flawed. How she hated to watch the man she loved punish himself over and over again to purge himself of a sin not his. It was a brutal penitence he insisted on performing. And yet she understood him only too well.
She forced her panic down. Falling to hysterics wouldn’t help now. The last thing she remembered was identifying Laura’s clothes then feeling ill. Her knees gave way now and she fell to the floor. She rested her head against the sturdy, wooden door where she could hear the muffled sounds of men passing, loud voices speaking in a language she didn’t understand, the cadence rapid and harsh without the musicality of Italian or Spanish, or the precision of English.
She stood, legs braced to accept the movement of the ship, and looked about her. She would need a weapon, something small, and pray she would not have to use it. She was under no illusion about her chances in a physical altercation with a man.
Be as cunning as a serpent and as harmless as a dove.
Cunning. She would be cunning.
*
Sophia ignored the hands on her, the unnecessary touching of the male attendant.
Selim Omar just sat there and watched her being stripped out of her English walking dress. It was clear he meant to humiliate her, asserting his authority without ever once laying a hand on her.
She kept her eyes on the man who, in the eyes of the law of his culture, now owned her. She was fully naked, and the hands upon her continued – up her flanks, between her legs, the curve of her bottom, the underside of her breasts.
The emir watched where the hands travelled with what seemed a benign indifference. There did not seem to be lust in his eyes, nor the breathtaking desire and passion that colored Kit’s eyes when he made love to her.
It was deliberate. She raised her chin.
The man who examined her stopped and addressed the sheik in a matter-of-fact tone as though he were a vet giving his professional verdict to a client on a prospective livestock purchase. Selim said a few words in reply and waved the man away before he addressed her in English.
“You have been pronounced disease-free and in good health,” he said.
“Did you expect anything less?”
That was the wrong thing to say. She knew it the moment it left her mouth. Selim flew from his seat and gripped her jaw tight.
“You forget, my dear, I own you now. That was our bargain. Your life is in my hands and subject to my whim. I expect to see your gratitude at all times.”
“You can have my gratitude when I see my cousin is safe and well,” she said, keeping her voice even. “That was our bargain. You don’t own me until then.”
She took in a deep breath, preparing for a beating, or worse. Instead, he laughed close to her face.
“You amuse me, azizety, so you have the benefit of my benevolence for now, but do not get accustomed to it.”
Selim shoved her and she stumbled back a few steps. He raked his eyes over her nakedness again; this time disgust filled his features.
“Get dressed and cover your head, woman. We leave the ship shortly.”
The door closed behind him and, a moment later, she heard the rasp of a bolt thrown home. She dressed swiftly into the long, green, shapeless dress she had been given. The only items of her own she that remained were her practical walking boots.
No sooner had she laced them than Selim’s attendant, a soft-faced, middle-aged man with light brown hair and the most startling blue eyes, returned. He chatted, heedless of her ability to understand him.
He picked up the long, grey scarf she had discarded and wrapped it over her head and around her shoulders until only her eyes were exposed. He stood back, as though admiring his handiwork.
“Ta’ala.”
Sophia frowned and shook her head.
“Ta’ala, ta’ala,” The man gestured with his hand. Apparently, she was to follow him.
After so long confined to the small cabin – days at least, a week perhaps – the daylight above was blinding. She accepted the eunuch’s aid up the steps to the deck and stayed close to him while she blinked rapidly, firstly to accustom her eyes and then to accustom her ears to the sounds of a busy seaport. Horns blared, men yelled – but it was the smell that assailed her. Not the full, rich tang of the sea touched by the aromas of olives and lemons as she experienced in Sicily. No. This city, wherever she was, smelled like a sewer and rotting fish. She pulled the voluminous scarf over her nose to quell her immediate instinct to retch and, instead, concentrated on studying the view before her.
Pale stone buildings huddled the harbor and followed the rise. Puncturing through the square, squat buildings were tall, skinny cylindrical towers in white, topped with conical roofs – some painted red, others green. She recognized them as minarets. She had seen something similar in Seville, a reminder of a time when the Mohammedan Empire stretched right across the Mediterranean Sea.
Drawing her eye to the highest point of the hill, one building dominated the landscape. It glinted gold in the late afternoon, its large, curved dome sitting on the shoulders of the squared structure below it. Standing proud at right angles on each corner, like sentries at attention, were four more minarets.
“Ta’ala, ta’ala,” her guard insisted, pulling her across the deck, down the gangway, and onto land. Before her was an ornately painted sedan chair. And from what Sophia could see, dominated by a seat of plush red. There was Selim Omar, dressed in the traditional robes of his country; white, wide-legged pants and tunic over which he wore a red, sleeveless vest. He entered the chair and, at the sound of his command, four large and muscular black men wearing matching livery squatted, raised the conveyance, and moved off, leaving Sophia and the rest of the retinue to follow behind on foot as though this were some kind of a triumphal march through ancient Rome.
Men on the street stopped and looked at them. Although she was covered head to foot, she saw the leering stares and felt them leach through her clothing. The women, those few who were on the streets, clustered in small groups of three or more, surrounded by equal numbers of men. Like her, their bodies and features were obscured by fabric.
She listened, trying to associate sounds with words and their meanings. If there was to be any help for her and Laura at all, she would need to know how to make herself understood. That would be her first task, once she was reunited with Laura.
The party made its way up the hill away from the bay. Up here, the breeze moved through and over the walled gardens, making the air sweeter. A surge of servants moved ahead and opened enormous timber gates. Sophia couldn’t help but gasp. Inside the imposing rendered walls was an oasis. Lush green lawns studded with date palms, raised garden beds featured magnificent plants in bloom. Very few of them she knew by sight. But the gardens were only the setting for the jewel at its center – a compound which seemed to comprise a series of interconnected buildings with gardens and fountains wending their way among them. The buildings were rendered a sandy yellow and decorated by jewel-like mosaic tiles of blues, reds, gold and green in geometric patterns.
Another gate, ornately carved in the Moorish style, opened into the inner courtyard. She heard birds and then saw them splashing about in the fountain.
The retinue started to disperse to various parts of the palace. Her eunuch escort looked back occasionally to make sure she still followed. They went through another set of elaborate gates into what Sophia supposed was the center of the complex. She heard the gate lock and glanced behind to see two black eunuchs with scimitars at their waists.
Here, she saw the first women since entering the external gates. They lounged on cushions by marble pools and fountains, and glanced up with various degrees of interest as she and the eunuch alone entered.
It was beautiful.
It was a prison.
She pushed back her scarf. Her escort stopped and called out to the lounging women. Slowly, two of them rose. She recognized one of them immediately, her light brown hair, soft pale shoulders bared in the diaphanous pink gown she wore. Sophia raised her skirts and started running towards her.
“Laura!”
At hearing her name, color filled the young woman’s face. Laura ran and threw herself into Sophia arms, sobbing incoherently. Sophia felt a stream of tears fall down her own face and she let them do so unabashed.
No sooner had they embraced than the guards pulled them apart. Laura screamed and Sophia put all of her strength into the struggle, useless though it was against a man double her size. The terror on Laura’s face was nearly more than she could bear. What ordeals had she endured in the nearly two months since she had been taken? Stories told in Kit’s journals, testimonies of women captured, came back to her. She shuddered at the recollection and quaked in body-shaking paroxysms now, knowing the horror was about to be hers to experience firsthand.