“We have to get them out of here.”
“And abandon the men?”
Our presence might be the only thing keeping the men from slaughter. “No, we have to get them, too.” “I’d say we have at least three or four days before …”
“I agree. I’ll talk to Holmes tonight, and co-ordinate our resources. I gave him a pen-knife. I wish I still had my revolver.” “I have one.”
“You do? How did they not find it?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Probably not. But you only have the one?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Pity, it might have given the men’s side an edge.”
“We could let them have it. Just barricade ourselves behind the door and trust that His Majesty will reach us before the pirates break it down.” “We may have to.”
“If you want to take it with you tonight, let me know.” “What are you two talking about?” Edith demanded.
Not missing a beat, Annie said, “We were agreeing how smashing you look in that garment.” Men in this place wore long robes (not, in fact, night-shirts) called galabiyyas, with or without hoods, of plain fabric but often with elaborate embroidery down the front. The women’s garments, called kaftans, were nearly identical – to an outsider. Edith’s galabiyya had been made for a taller person, but we did, after all, have an official seamstress with us, for whom it had been no task at all to raise a few hems.
Edith looked unconvinced, but couldn’t help glancing down at the thick intertwining pattern decorating the front of the otherwise plain brown garment. “I need a belt for my knife.” Somehow, the child had adopted (and what was more, managed to retain) one of the pirates’ dummy knives, impressive but useless for anything more demanding than cleaning beneath one’s fingernails.
Annie stood up. “Lots of men wear their weapons in a sort of sash. I’m sure we can find something that will do.” And thus the long day began, with the worst possible news and a dive into the dressing-up box. Many, many maddeningly long hours later, during which every possible permutation of our captivity and rescue had been mooted, I finally took up my climbing rope and Annie’s revolver and made my escape over the wall.
Holmes was expecting me, the shutter-latch already open. The odour from within suggested that a candle had recently been extinguished, lest it outline my figure dangling outside, but the room remained dimly illuminated by the light seeping around the door. His hand came out, reassuring and warm. I adjusted the rope so the pressure was to the side of the previous bruises rather than directly on top of them, and greeted him.
“Were you permitted to converse with the two diplomatic gentlemen this morning?” I asked.
“Briefly, but enough to see that they are working hard to shape a disaster. You caught the messages I embedded into the song?” “That Hale is not a villain?”
“When La Rocha and Samuel came for Hale the other evening, it was to compose letters to the British and French authorities. Ransom has been set, two thousand guineas a head in British or French currency, to be paid the day after tomorrow.” “Hale told you this? And you believe him?”
“I think him an unskilled actor. In any event, his claim is verified by Maurice.” “The cook?”
“He is French, so Samuel handed him the letter and had him translate it aloud into English, or enough of it to satisfy him that it was as he had instructed.” “Two thousand guineas a head,” I mused.
“They must be in a hurry to conclude the business, else they’d have asked for more.” “Well,” I said, “Annie thinks – oh, that’s right, you don’t know – oh, for heaven’s sake, Holmes, if I try to tell it all out here, I’ll never make it up the rope again. Move back.” Between my wriggling and Holmes’ tugging I got inside without a huge amount of noise or loss of skin, and I was alone with my husband for the first time since Lestrade’s bombshell of a letter had arrived in Sussex. He relit his candle and we sat, shoulder to shoulder, as I recounted the events since last we had met.
“When I returned to the rooftop the other night,” I began, “two of the girls were waiting for me. Though one is a boy, and the other is Mycroft’s man.” He reached into his garment and came out with his tobacco pouch; clearly this was a tale requiring thought. His hand went still when I told him Annie’s theory about white slavery, and although I tried to keep it light, by that time I more than half believed it myself. The grimness with which he continued filling the pipe bowl suggested that he did, too.
When I had finished, he asked a question that seemed to have nothing to do with it.
“Am I correct in thinking that from your side, there is no view of the water?” “A slice to the south and another to the north, but you’re right, the wall they put up to separate the two houses blocks most of it.” “Then you will not have seen the British gun-boat, lying offshore.” To that, there could be little response but an expletive. I readily provided one, adding, “Do they think they can shell the town?” “I shouldn’t say the verb think applies in this case.” “And Holmes, they’ve arrested La Rocha.”
“That explains why one keeps hearing the parrot.”
“Searching for his master, yes.”
“A person would imagine Lestrade was in charge here,” he muttered.
“Sir Morgan intends to come back tomorrow with biscuits and fresh milk, and to take away any letters we wish to send home.” “They won’t permit him inside the city wall.”
“I agree.”
“Tell me the rest of your day.”
My story took some telling, but eventually I came to the distasteful admission of my surreptitious message to the English envoy. I added, “I have to say, however, that the name seemed to have no effect on him. Either he is ignorant of Mycroft, or so hard of hearing that he missed the message entirely.” Holmes drew thoughtfully on his pipe, although by this time it no longer contained any combustible material. “One must indeed speculate over the relationship between La Rocha and his brother. If they are close and Samuel is content to be subordinate, he will do all he can to free La Rocha. Which would include physical threat to his prisoners. On the other hand, if your new friend’s speculation is correct and Samuel is making a bid for control, then he will leave here as soon as possible, now that the British have confirmed the state of those to be ransomed.” “You don’t think he’ll wait until he receives the ransom money?” “He may. He may also leave us men here, under guard and with an agent, until the British monies are transferred, while he heads into the Atlas mountains with you women. Or he may simply dispose of us as superfluous burdens. I should say it would depend on whether or not he has a trusted agent he can leave behind.” “Like, a son.”
“Precisely.”
“And yet, I’d have thought Adam too squeamish for killing and abductions. He’s more than half in love with Annie.” “He is also the age at which young men need to prove themselves to their fathers.” I found that I had been leaning against him, firmly enough that his arm was now around my shoulders. I relished the heavy security, the sense of being under protection. Then I noticed what I was doing and sprang to my feet, suddenly furious.
“Holmes, I have no intention of permitting any of those girls to be put into a harem, even temporarily. We can get everyone away. We simply have to.” He withdrew his pipe from his lips; his grey eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “That’s my Russell,” he said. “How?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
POLICE [pianissimo]: Tarantara, tarantara!
I SPENT HOURS in Holmes’ cell as we shared what we knew of the city, of our captors, and of our fellow prisoners. We agreed that Fflytte and Will were our weak points: Will would refuse to abandon his reels of exposed film; Fflytte would refuse to abandon his dreams. In the end, we decided that Hale would just have to tuck his cousin under his arm, while Bert and one of the other pseudo-constables could deal with Will.
We would go at midnight tomorrow, an hour that in Lisbon would find half the city still moving around
, but here found even the dogs asleep. Using the pick-lock I had given him, Holmes would let himself out of his cell and, when he had overcome the closest guard, loose his fellow prisoners.
At one a.m., we would assemble on the street outside, men and women alike, and move fast through the streets of the medina to the gate.
The success of the venture rested on the element of surprise: By the time anyone could decide to shoot at us, we would be upon them.
We sat on his hard cot, staring at the candle – wearing, no doubt, identical expressions of dissatisfaction. Holmes glared at his stone-cold pipe. “There are too many uncontrollable variables.”
“I don’t like it one bit!”
Get a grip, Russell. “I agree, it stinks of the stage. One of those plays in which every turn is thwarted by disaster. I keep expecting some unforeseen twist that will throw everything into confusion. Oh, I’m sorry, Holmes,” I said. “I’ve been surrounded by actresses too long.”
“Never mind,” he said. “I’ve spent much of my life being thought of as a fiction. One grows accustomed to it.”
Time for me to leave.
I stood up and removed Annie’s revolver from my pocket. “I think you should have this.”
He shook his head.
“Holmes, you have armed guards, we have one housekeeper and a pair of adolescent house-maids. We are valuable property, you are easily disposed of. We have more knives and blunt implements than we can hold; you have your hands. Until we join forces, you have greater need of armament than we do.”
He pressed the weapon back into my hand. “The pocket-knife is sufficient. If I succeed in overcoming the first guard without noise, then we will have a gun. If I do not, those on this side are lost in any event, and you will need your gun to get out of your front door.”
Reluctantly, but in agreement, I returned the weapon to my pocket, and went to the window. When he had snuffed the candle, I put my head out, waiting until I was certain there was neither guard nor traffic before I inserted myself into the narrow slot and permitted Holmes to shove me steadily outward.
“Until midnight tomorrow,” I whispered.
“Insh’allah,” he returned, that Arabic phrase and philosophy that I had learnt (and lived by) in Palestine: If it be the will of Allah.
Indeed.
* * *
Annie and Edith were on the rooftop again. This time, they had wrapped themselves in their bed-coverings, and were fast asleep.
I would have left them where they sat, propped upright against each other, but their backs were to the door and I did not feel like finding an alternative route downstairs. I laid a hand on Annie’s shoulder, and found myself looking into the gleam of a knife in the low lamp-light. I went still; she blinked; the blade went away. She threw off her bed-clothes and stood.
Edith did not wake – or did not appear to – but still I turned my back on her before I retrieved the gun and handed it to Annie. “He didn’t want it,” I said. She thrust it without hesitation into her waist-band, then squatted to pick up Edith. I tucked cotton and eiderdown under one arm, held up the shielded lamp, and followed the two of them down the stairs.
* * *
Despite the misgivings I had shared with Holmes, no unexpected disaster met us on the stairway, no twist of wicked fortune roused us from our beds.
The Fates waited until we were up and around the next morning before throwing out their threads and entangling us all in catastrophe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PIRATES [very loud]: With cat-like tread,
Upon our prey we steal;
In silence dread
Our cautious way we feel.
IN THE THREE days we had spent here, the outer door had opened precisely six times: once to receive our luggage, twice for the diplomats the day before, and once each afternoon during the quiet time between lunch and tea, when the cook’s two girls collected the baskets and string bags of supplies, and gave any requests for the following day. Apart from that, it was closed and locked.
Which meant that when the door was pushed open that morning, it took a moment to identify the noise. Confusion lasted but an instant, replaced by alarm as the sound of multiple boots on tiles echoed down the entranceway.
Half of us were on our feet, and of those still seated, most had a hand at her throat when Samuel marched in, two armed guards at his back and a look of open triumph on his face. It was the sort of situation in which women traditionally swooned; actresses, it seemed, were of sterner stuff.
Mrs Hatley, one of those who had stayed in her chair, forced her hand away from her throat and brought her spine upright. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, her voice very nearly under control.
“Meaning is, time to go now.” He leered; that is the only word for that expression.
Everyone but Mrs Hatley and I were on their feet now, the girls drawing together in uncertainty. “You mean,” Fannie asked, “we’re free to go?”
“Oh, at last!” Isabel cried.
June’s head came over the upstairs balcony. “We’re leaving?”
Doris’s pale curls appeared directly above June. “Have I time to wash my hair?” A third golden mop was just visible above hers, on the other side of the wooden grating – someone had gone up early to the rooftop. No head was still on its pillow; all ears were hanging on the pirate’s words.
Edith, who had just come into the room wearing her Moroccan pirate’s gear, looked from the men to me and asked, “Shall I change back into my frock?”
“No,” I said in a loud voice. The criss-cross of talk stuttered and died. With all attention on me, I faced Samuel across the courtyard. “He doesn’t mean we’re free to go. He means he’s taking us elsewhere. Someplace very secure and impossible to escape.”
He ignored the ripples of distress that swept the house and had the guards tightening their grips on the guns. His gleaming boots padded across the tiles. With every step he grew larger, until he came to a halt a hand’s breadth from my knees and stared down, willing me towards retreat. But I had no place to go, literally or figuratively, and I fingered the knife I had secreted in my sleeve, waiting for a distraction that might give me a chance against those lightning reflexes.
“What is this, Parrot?” he asked.
Being a tall woman leaves one ill prepared for the sensation of smallness. I felt myself shrinking with this cruel figure towering over me, growing small, and weak.
And he knew it. I saw in his eyes the dawning of cruel delight. His lips parted, but-
“Edith, no!”
Samuel whirled away – God, he was fast for a big man! – before my arm could move. Edith, sprinting across the tiles, skidded to a halt not because of her mother’s command, but because of the blade in Samuel’s hand.
Seeing the threat was nothing more than a little girl in a boy’s caftan, Samuel straightened, and said something to the guards. They laughed; Edith flushed; Mrs Nunnally gathered her child in. The pirate’s lieutenant turned back to me – and the sky fell in.
That was what it felt like. Impossible motion from the upper reaches of my vision, a sound like a roomful of teeth crackling down on a million tiny bones, and then a huge hand smashed out of the heavens. All the musical notes in the world shouted at once; as I cowered down, my hunched back was pummelled by a rain of sharp, dry objects.
Things stopped falling. My head beneath my arms seemed to be in one piece. I tentatively raised one arm – then remembered Edith, and staggered upright.
The child stood, her mother at her back, both of them untouched but gape-jawed with shock. I, too, was aware of that familiar swaddled sensation that accompanies a severe blow. I bent to pick up a length of silver-dry timber that my foot had kicked. There seemed to be quite a bit of the stuff scattered around. Numbly curious, I looked upward, past first one, then another blonde girl, both wearing the same flabbergasted expression as Edith. Beyond them a third face looked down, from the rooftop. Yet I could see her clearly. For s
ome reason, the wooden grating seemed to have a hole in it. A large hole. Through which I could see Annie. Her big blue eyes were wide, too – but not with shock, or horror.
With triumph.
Unwillingly, I made my gaze descend, to see what caused that expression.
And saw an overturned piano.
From under its edges protruded a pair of shiny black boots.
* * *
Isabel’s mother broke first, with the sort of dangerous giggle that pleads for a slap. Fannie and June followed, their laughter freer, as if this might be one of Mr Fflytte’s clever tricks.
The guards put an end to it. No one but me understood their urgent command for silence, but all grasped the intent of those weapons.
The house shuddered into silence, broken only by the whimper of Isabel’s mother.
The larger of the two men walked over to his engulfed boss. Samuel’s disbelief had frozen him to the spot for one crucial second; now the instrument neatly covered all but a few inches of his footwear. A glance under the other edge convinced the man that he did not want to see further. He told his partner, “He’s dead.”
The man gave forth a rich curse, and followed it with, “What do we do now?”
“We hold them until someone comes.”
“No one will come.” I spoke in Arabic; the guards goggled as if the fountain had made a pronouncement. I went on, my voice inexorable, speaking a language designed for pure rhetoric. “No one will come but the British and the French armies. They will find you here and they will kill you. They will fall on you and they will arrest you and they will arrest your families, then they will stand you before a line of men with rifles and they will shoot you dead, your sons and your brothers and your mothers, if you do not leave us this instant, if you-”
I’ll never know if my words alone would have broken their will and sent them bolting for the door, because instead of the Army falling on them, an afrit came down, a ghost or perhaps the spirit of their dead leader: A great billowing white cloud filled the air over their heads, giving out a ghostly moan. Both men snapped up their shotguns and fired, both bores. The next moment, as one panicked guard was beating away the shredded bed-sheet, a regiment of harpies fell upon him, pounding at him with flower pots and broomsticks and the upper half of the tagine crock, descending on him like the Red Queen’s deck of cards, screaming and pummelling him to the ground. The other guard dropped his empty shotgun to rip at the revolver in his sash, and my hand threw the weapon it held – except as it left my grip I realised it was not my knife but the scrap of wood. I scrabbled for my blade. His gun went wildly off, once, before the blade reached him and he grabbed his shoulder and went down, the revolver skittering across the tiles to Edith’s feet. She picked up the heavy weapon and pointed it at him, her hands wavering but determined.
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