by V. E. Ulett
Today there was even more activity on the quay, and within the massive batteries along the waterfront. The place was swarming with soldiers and civilians. The great wave of sweating people filing down to the water’s edge and milling about the quay surprised and rather horrified Dashwood.
A festival atmosphere prevailed complete with vendors of oranges, dates, and skewered meats. The sellers jostled through the bodies, crying out and waving their fragrant wares overhead. Dashwood gathered the natives were expecting a show, anticipating the British ships would be blown out of the water. For a small city, the fortifications of Algiers were mighty. The batteries protecting the anchorage and waterfront together mounted 220 guns, of 32, 24 and 18 pounder cannons.
The British fleet was lying becalmed at the western end of the Bay of Algiers. Sir Edward Pellew, Admiral Lord Exmouth, was commander in chief of the combined British and Dutch forces. His lordship dispatched Dashwood, Lieutenant Burgess, and two of Queen Charlotte’s midshipmen to the Dey for a response to Britain’s demands. The Dey’s port admiral met Prometheus’s boat and escorted the chosen officers, Mr. Burgess and Mr. Kirker, into the hostile city.
As time passed and the British delegation did not return, Dashwood began to reconsider. He had no wish to see that young woman—she must be young with her sweet feminine voice and gaze—in the middle of a dangerous action. After pacing the crowded quay for more than an hour, Dashwood was almost relieved when an uproar broke out near the entrance gate. By aggressive use of his elbows, Dashwood opened a lane toward the commotion, with little midshipman Richards in his wake.
Ahead he could just make out two sets of British uniforms. The first two figures in Royal Navy blue were passing the military guard, followed by a crowd of bearers. Among the porters and not far behind two mincing midshipmen, was an elegant woman striding beside a man with a large woven basket balanced on his head. Her hair was covered, but Dashwood strained and caught a glimpse of an oval face and large luminous eyes. Her attention was focused on the man with the basket, and then the man stumbled, nearly upsetting his load.
A child’s loud bawling erupted, followed by shouts from the guards. The cry was taken up by soldiers loitering outside their gun embrasures. As Dashwood struggled to make out what had become of the woman and the basket, the first of those two midshipmen reached him and fell upon his breast.
He was forced to turn immediately for Prometheus’s boat, with the sobbing woman in midshipman’s dress under his arm. He signaled to Richards to take the arm of the second midshipman. Miss Fanny Bruce was faring better than her mama, who was wailing incoherently. The common people on the quay edged away from her, as they would before a mad woman.
Dashwood wanted to turn back after handing her into the boat, go up the quay and investigate. Where was Miss Kodio Blackwell, with what must have been the Consul’s infant son in that basket? He was sure it was her face—those eyes!—he’d glimpsed in the crowd. Lieutenant Burgess and Midshipman Kirker came pelting up; they’d been the second set of uniforms he’d spotted in the crowd. Once they leapt in the boat, Dashwood couldn’t justify waiting longer.
“Pull away,” he ordered. “Steer for the flag, Sims.”
Lady Elgin was sobbing on Lieutenant Burgess’ gold-laced shoulder. The lieutenant shook his head sadly at Dashwood. Free of that encumbrance, Dashwood craned round and stared back at the quay. A captain of artillery jumped up on the outside of his gun embrasure and shouted down into the crowd. Whatever the man heard in response from the tangled mass of people below made him draw his sword. The Algerian glared directly at Dashwood as the boat pulled away, and shook his sword at him.
The artillery captain then sheathed his weapon, running along the outside of the gun embrasures, and jumping down level by level, until he was on the quay and swallowed up by the crowd. A sick dread and apprehension filled Dashwood for the woman they were leaving behind.
“Oh!” Miriam cried. “Captain Ansari, how glad I am to see you!”
Shakeel Ahmed Ansari pushed his way through the knot of people surrounding Miriam and Tommy, lying squalling and furious in the open basket. Atif Mehmood was beside her; the cook had answered Captain Ansari’s hail.
“Fire on them, Captain! The British women, they are making away in that boat! When I could not find them at the Consul’s residence, I followed them here.”
“The little squaller gave them away,” Atif Mehmood added helpfully. “They were dressed in men’s uniforms, the sluts!”
Captain Ansari shot a furious scowl at Atif Mehmood, and whirled about to stare at the rapidly retreating boat. Then he glanced down at Tommy, kicking and screaming.
“No, it will not do. They are already out of range, the English dogs, and orders are orders. We are not to fire first.”
He turned a penetrating gaze on Miriam. She pursed her lips and leaned over the basket, allowing her head scarf to shield her face.
“I know what you are thinking, Miss,” the Captain said. “What kind of benighted creature runs away dressed as a man, and leaves behind her own son? It is an offense to God.”
Miriam straightened and met Captain Ansari’s fierce stare. “It is an offense you shall avenge.” She cast her eyes upward to Captain Ansari’s gun emplacement.
His gun’s crew had come out from their positions and were gaping at them over the edge of the gun embrasure.
“Lieutenant Saed!” Captain Ansari called. While the nimble lieutenant made his way down to them, Ansari mumbled to Miriam, “The heathen dogs will not cause me to miss the first shots of this battle!” The Captain raised his voice. “Lieutenant Saed, escort Miss Albuyeh and the baby to the Consul’s residence. And when you get there, I want him clapped in irons! Do you hear? Shackle him in the small downstairs sitting room, leave one guard, bring the rest and report as fast as ever you can. We shall need every man.”
Captain Ansari’s keen dark eyes were on the war ships sailing into the Bay of Algiers. Before she left with the lieutenant, Captain Ansari said to Miriam, in a private aside, “It is a good thing you are here to look after the baby, Miss Albuyeh. It is more humanity than the infidels deserve.”
Miriam gave him a wide-eyed look. It was never difficult to convince a man she was stupider than she was.
Lieutenant Saed wasn’t eager to leave the quay before the first shots were fired, pushing his way through the crowd with so little enthusiasm that they hadn’t passed the guard at the gate. Consequently Miriam was there when, a sea breeze coming up, the fleet sailed in and took up stations half a pistol shot from the quay and the breakwater behind which lay the entire Algerian navy. Even Tommy was no longer bawling. One of the sweets sellers had taken pity on him, and given the boy a sugar teat. From Miriam’s arms Tommy nodded his infant head round at the scene while he sucked.
The massive three-decker 100-gun Queen Charlotte was brought to just at the mouth of the anchorage near the breakwater. Her crew began lashing her to an Algerian brig moored quayside. Three more heavy British frigates of 40 to 50-guns each sailed in and took up stations ahead in line of Queen Charlotte, so that the British two and three deckers’ starboard guns bore on the Fish Market Battery and the City to the southwest. More heavy British ships were taking up stations aft of Queen Charlotte, from the breakwater in a line running northeasterly. The Bay of Algiers was filled with hundreds of sails. Smaller British ships, the sloops and bomb vessels, were sailing behind the line of battle ships.
The crowd on the quay was all agape at the spectacle, including Captain Ansari’s artillerymen and many other guns’ crews, watching the British fleet from outside their gun embrasures.
“A prodigious fine sight maybe,” Lieutenant Saed said. “But are not they taking a precious long time to anchor?”
Miriam shrugged and shook her head. Besides lashing the flag to the Algerian brig, as an aid to the rest of the fleet in taking up their proper positions, Queen Charlotte would be mooring with springs to her cables; lines that could be pulled on to swing her tremen
dous broadside to bear in different directions. When a signal broke out aboard Queen Charlotte, Miriam took firmer hold of Tommy and began tunneling through the crowd.
Lieutenant Saed had no choice but to follow. Signal flags were racing up to the yardarms of the nearest British ships. Miriam looked back, and so close were they that she could make out a cluster of officers aboard Queen Charlotte. The most resplendently clad figure on Queen Charlotte’s quarterdeck was gesturing at the soldiers and artillerymen standing on the parapets of the Algerian guns, as though shooing them away.
Miriam clutched Tommy to her chest, hunched her shoulders round him, and ran.
“Miss Albuyeh!” Lieutenant Saed called, clear of the crowd at last. “Where’s the hurry? It could be hours. We have orders not to fire first!”
Just as the lieutenant finished speaking one of the shore batteries fired on Queen Charlotte. Two more guns discharged at the opposite end of the breakwater. Seconds later Queen Charlotte’s full broadside roared out, followed by those of the anchored fleet training their guns on the City’s fortifications. Miriam didn’t stop running. Behind her on the quay was din, carnage, and hell-fire.
When a cannonball stuck in the thick outer wall surrounding the Consul’s residence, Miriam went out to examine it. From her vantage point outside the villa walls she viewed the Algerian ships all ablaze in the harbor. Had the ships not been on fire it would have been difficult to distinguish anything in the bay, the bombardment had been going on for three hours. What was most visible at this distance were the tops of Queen Charlotte’s masts, rising above a layer of smoke and dust thrown up from the destroyed batteries.
“A near run thing, Corporal,” she said to the only remaining Algerian soldier at the Consul’s villa, by way of comment on the shot.
Several areas of the City were burning. Miriam stared toward the fires, standing with the corporal at the door of the villa. The young soldier in his neat uniform shuffled, and patted the sword hanging from his sash, as though marching in place. Miriam wondered if he might live in a part of the City now ablaze.
Atif Mehmood came puffing up the twilit lane. “Take me to the house where the British are held, the useful ones, the surgeon is who we want. God be with you, Miss.” Breathing heavily from his trek through the ancient tiered streets, he bowed to Miriam.
“The defense goes badly then,” the young corporal said. “So many are wounded?”
“Hah! as to that, do not presume to question. Captain Ansari sends for the surgeon, that is all you need to know.” Atif Mehmood caught Miriam’s eye. “I daresay we have killed many pork and beef fed Englishmen today. Six hundred and more. Enough to fill one of their largest ships.”
The head cook gave her a nod of satisfaction, and Miriam tried to appear suitably impressed.
“What are you waiting for?” Atif Mehmood said.
“Am I to leave my post then?” the corporal squeaked.
“Is the English lord not shackled within?”
“He is, but—”
“Leave your keys with this young woman, and come along at once. Was she not sent by the Dey Himself to look after the infidel’s young? They are not capable of it themselves. You shall return to your post directly we deliver the physician.”
With a look of relief the corporal gave his keys into Miriam’s hand. She noted the direction they set off, and their first turning. When they were out of sight, she ran into the villa and emerged again draped in a black head scarf.
Miriam returned to the Consul’s residence as swiftly as she could after following Atif Mehmood and the corporal to the house, a few streets away, where Prometheus’s people were held. The guard there was light. If the good British tars within knew there were but two men standing sentry, there would have been a dust up. Atif Mehmood and the corporal took the precaution of bundling the surgeon away with a length of turban cloth tied about his eyes. Even over the boom of the great guns—a background din that seemed as if it had always been there, so long had it gone on—Miriam heard Tommy’s shrieking.
She sped toward the sound and found Tommy with one of the kitchen servants.
“Be so good as to give the child his milk,” Miriam said. “I have matters to attend to with the British Consul.” She strode out of the cook house, the haughty hanim.
“Oh, Miriam! May I call you Miriam?” Lord Elgin cried.
Miriam entered meaning to unlock his manacles, but instead she dropped the key she’d been clutching into her pocket. He was unharmed, Lieutenant Saed having done him the courtesy of shackling his hands in front of him. An active man could have done much left in that position.
“If I only knew how the battle goes on!” Lord Elgin said. “At least tell me what you can make out from the window, dear girl.”
She moved obligingly to the window, but as they were on the ground floor and a high wall surrounded the villa, there was only the garden to be seen.
“Earlier I saw the City on fire, my lord, at least three separate blazes. And there is such a prodigious quantity of smoke in the harbor, I make no doubt your forces will have destroyed the Dey’s entire fleet.”
“To say nothing of the batteries guarding the breakwater,” Lord Elgin said. “And the guns protecting the City.”
“The great guns have been firing on Algiers since three o’clock this afternoon.”
“Oh yes.” Lord Elgin lifted his manacled hands as though it were not obvious he was chained in place. “They may prevent me from taking an active part in this battle, but I have studied martial tactics and I can imagine how it has gone. Lord Exmouth and the force from Gibraltar will by this time have destroyed not only the Dey’s entire fleet, but the greater part of the batteries protecting the anchorage and the City. I heard what I take to be rockets. Those are the cause of the fires you saw in the City. I would wager the fires shall soon spread to the store houses, and have all the commerce near the quay ablaze.”
“With the loss of thousands of lives,” Miriam said, “and the expense of how many million sequins.”
She stared at Lord Elgin. He was a diplomat sent to pursue the interests of the Crown above all else to be sure, but had he no fellow feeling for the people he’d lived among? Miriam withdrew her hand entirely from the pocket of her dress. She’d best remember why she was there, and stop making out that people were any better than they were. Miriam forced a smile onto her face, to take the bite out of her last words.
Lord Elgin rubbed his hands together, clanking the chain that bound his manacles to an anvil on the floor. “I must thank you for your part in helping Lady Elgin and Fanny get away.”
“I could wish your dear little boy had gotten away too, but babies will cry. It’s what they do, and I must go see he has taken his milk.”
Miriam moved toward the drawing room door.
“A moment, if you please, Miriam,” Lord Elgin said. “You will not forget there is another helpless sufferer under this roof, I trust? Be a good girl, and see if you can smuggle past the guards a bottle of the Haut Brion with the long cork and perhaps a pye. That fat cook makes a fine sea pye.”
She turned to Lord Elgin slowly, to look the man in the face who would be feasting while countrymen died.
“I shall try my very best, your lordship.” Miriam averted her gaze in a diffident way before continuing, “May I ask a favor of you, sir, in return? You see I came to you from Lord Q with only the clothes I stand up in. May I...that is, might I have your permission to make free of Lady Elgin’s or Miss Fanny’s wardrobe?”
She finished her appeal in a small voice, and peeked at Lord Elgin through her lashes. Miriam caught the look of utter relief on his face, which was quickly followed by a smug expression that seemed to proclaim just how well he understood women.
“My dear girl! Of course, you must make free of my wife’s wardrobe, and her daughter’s if you so choose. I daresay Fanny’s things will suit you better, for you are a mere slip of a—”
“I am very much obliged to you,” Miriam broke
in, to prevent him calling her girl one more time. False gratitude, it turned out, tasted bitter.
She dropped a hasty curtsey and fled the presence of the British Consul to Algiers.
Chapter Three
“H.M.S. Queen Charlotte
Algiers Bay, August 20, 18XX
Sir, - For your atrocities at Bona on defenceless Christians, and your unbecoming disregard to the demands I made yesterday, in the name of the Prince Regent of England, the fleet under my orders has given you signal chastisement by the total destruction of your navy, storehouse, and arsenal, with half your batteries.
As England does not war for the destruction of cities, I am unwilling to visit your personal cruelties upon the inoffensive inhabitants of the country, and I therefore offer you the same terms of peace which I conveyed to you yesterday in my sovereign’s name; without the acceptance of those terms you can have no peace with England.
If you receive this offer as you ought, you will fire three guns, and I shall consider your not making this signal as a refusal, and shall renew my operations at my own convenience.
I offer you the above terms provided neither the British Consul, nor the officers and men, so wickedly seized by you from the boats of a British ship of war, have met with any cruel treatment, or any of the Christian slaves in your power; and I repeat my demand, that the Consul, officers, and men may be sent off to me conformably to ancient treaties.
I have, etc.,
Exmouth”
At first light Miriam crept into the small sitting room where Lord Elgin was asleep, drooling on his shirt front, and woke and unshackled him. By nine o’clock that morning the Consul’s villa was filled with British sea officers, marines, and a contingent of rough pigtailed seamen. In a nondescript gray morning dress, with a black scarf covering her head and shoulders as before, Miriam led Mr. Burgess and his men to the house where Prometheus’s people remained, unguarded.