At least now she had a little money at her disposal. A promissory note for Benjamin’s share of the skins he had purchased in Fez had arrived. As had a promissory note from her dowry, which would last until the end of the year to feed her and her children, to pay the servants, and to repay her debt to Nadira.
Sea spray came over the low side of the boat and splashed on Sibylla’s tunic. She wrapped her arms around the basket on her knees and looked back at the shore. Along the sand, pack camels laden with tall loads were moving southward in a long line behind their drivers. Behind them, bathed in sunlight, rose the white walls of Mogador. It was such a peaceful image. She could hardly imagine that war might actually threaten the city soon.
The six men rowed rhythmically past the frigates and brigantines. The Island of Mogador lay before them in the morning mist. The pointy parapets and the tall minaret made the island look like the spiny back of a dragon emerging from the water. High in the air, she saw a falcon, seemingly tiny and almost motionless. Sibylla shaded her eyes and watched as it suddenly swooped down at the island like an arrow.
The thought of her husband made her self-conscious, and she was honest enough to admit that she had not much missed him during his three months of captivity. She had missed André far more.
A few minutes later, the oarsmen slowed and guided the boat through the pointed rock needles protruding from the water to a sandy part of the beach. The commander of the fort and two Black Guards were already awaiting her. The captain helped her disembark.
“Come back after afternoon prayers!” she ordered before the launch cast off again with rapid strokes.
“Assalamu alaikum.” She turned to the commander, a bearded, imposing man with a huge scimitar on his belt. He growled something faintly resembling “Wa-alaikum salam” and pointed to her basket. “Unpack!”
She spread clothes, books, newspapers, toiletries, and a package with fresh bread, fruit, and cheese in front of the soldiers. The commander looked bored, but his soldiers fingered Benjamin’s clothes with great interest. They confiscated his razor but she was allowed to keep everything else. Next, the soldiers took her to the fortress. Sultan Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah had had the first walls built at the end of the last century. His descendant Moulay Abd al-Rahman had expanded it with four cannon-fortified bastions and a mosque. Sibylla noticed that it was teeming with soldiers. If the French did attack Mogador, they would meet with forceful resistance.
She decided not to tell Benjamin about the possible threat of war. She did not want to add to his worries. She wrapped her scarf firmly around her head as the wind here was considerably stronger than on the mainland. Apart from a few windblown thuja trees, the only other flora on the island was junipers, grass, and low-growing lichens bearing tiny yellow and white blossoms. Otherwise, there was nothing but rocks, sand, rabbit holes, and soldiers.
Benjamin’s cell was located off the inner courtyard of the western bastion. Sibylla was surprised to find the heavy wooden door open. But then, where was he going to escape to? She stood in front of a small rectangular room. The floor and wall were made of rammed earth, and daylight entered only through the door and a small hole high up on one wall. Sibylla noticed a heavy table with a water jug and an oil lamp. Then she saw Benjamin. He sat on a bed consisting of a simple wooden frame and a straw mattress and was balancing an earthenware bowl of couscous on his knees.
“Hello, Benjamin.”
“Sibylla!” He jumped up. The bowl slid off his knees and smashed on the hard floor. Sibylla was horrified to see a mouse flit out from under the bed and greedily fall upon the simple meal. But Benjamin paid it no mind.
“Finally! I was beginning to think you were going to let me rot in here. What is it, can I go? Is the qaid letting me go?” He rushed up to her.
“Let me have a look at you!” She almost did not recognize her own husband. He had grown so thin that the soiled suit hung from his shoulders. His cheeks and eyes were sunken. His hair was long and stringy, half his face covered with a matted beard. He smelled unwashed and she immediately began checking for fleas and lice. There was not much left of the Benjamin who used to wear tailor-made suits, silk vests, and diamond-studded cravat pins, who took daily baths and had his hands manicured so that they were softer than a woman’s.
“I brought you some things.” She placed her basket on the table.
He hastily rummaged through the contents. “Soap? Books? Underwear? Does this mean that I’m staying here? Have you made no attempts to get me released?”
“Well, actually, I’ve been drinking tea and going on picnics. Unfortunately, the picnics are quite lonely as all my former friends believe that my husband is a slave trader.”
He quickly softened his tone. “Don’t get upset, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I had to let them keep the razor,” she continued after a short pause. “But for a few dirhams, the commander promised to allow you to use it every morning.”
Benjamin reached for the newspapers and scanned the headlines. “Railway shares have risen in England. Just as I predicted! If I weren’t stuck here, I would invest. Railways are the future. I can feel it in my bones! But I’m not allowed to take care of any business here and meanwhile there are fifty camel-loads of leather rotting in the caravanserai. Spencer & Son is going to go bankrupt in Mogador.”
“It is not,” Sibylla proudly declared. “I have inspected the leather and had it shipped to England. I have already received the promissory note for our share.”
He sized her up. “Are you trying to steal my job?”
“I have preserved your job! The children and I have to eat and the servants need to be paid!” She was painfully disappointed. Why did he not praise her? Still, she forced herself to set aside her bitterness.
“No one in London knows what has happened. All I wrote to Father was that I was filling in for you for a time. But I need your advice, Benjamin. I have many questions.”
He placed his hand on her arm. His skin was rough and chapped, his fingernails black. “You are so clean,” he said quietly. “So incredibly clean.” He shuddered as though he wanted to dispel bad thoughts.
They sat side by side on a piece of grass on the shore. Somewhere behind them on one of the bastions, the commander was shouting orders. One could hear the cannons rattling and squeaking as they were positioned in front of the embrasures. But before them lay the seemingly endless Atlantic Ocean, smooth and silvery, empty but for a few fishing boats.
“Do you know what they’re doing up there on the bastion?” Sibylla asked.
Benjamin shook his head. “No idea. But it’s been going on for a few weeks. Perhaps they’re as bored as I am.”
With Sibylla’s intervention and dirhams, he had been permitted to wash and put on fresh clothes. Sibylla had untangled his matted hair. Except for his beard, he was once again beginning to resemble the man she knew.
“After my first three days here, I tried to escape,” he boasted.
Sibylla was horrified. “What? As though we didn’t have enough difficulties already!”
He grinned at her sideways. “I jumped in the water and was going to try to swim to one of the English ships that was anchored not too far from here. I’m a good swimmer, or have you forgotten our adventure in the harbor basin in London? Unfortunately, the Negroes came after me in their boat. The commander was fit to be tied. He locked me up for three weeks. Now he lets me out again. But they’ve been keeping a closer eye on me—and on the boat too.”
Sibylla looked at two small emerald-green lizards sunning themselves on the warm earth. “And how is your treatment overall?”
He shrugged. “They leave me alone. We can hardly communicate anyhow. Neither the Moors nor the Negroes speak English, and my Arabic, well, you know how that is.”
“And what do you do all day?”
“Every morning, I walk around the island. That takes me two hours. The rest of the day is rather monotonous,” he replied vaguely.
; He did not want to tell her that his solitude was making him strange, that he carried on quiet conversations with the rabbits, and that he had tried to teach tricks to the mice scurrying through his cell.
“Is Willshire making any effort to free me? I must get off this island, for God’s sake!” he suddenly exclaimed. “You have to find out what they’re planning to do with me! Last night, I dreamed the sultan was going to behead me!”
“Willshire has sent a letter to Consul General Drummond-Hay in Tangier to ask him to protest your arrest officially,” Sibylla tried to reassure him. “But you have to bear up a bit longer. We both know that clocks in the Orient tick differently.”
“No! I have to get off this island. Write to your father, to the queen, bribe the qaid, but do something!”
“The qaid has already helped himself. His people ransacked our house and took everything.”
“What?” Benjamin grabbed her arm. “Where did they look? What did they find?”
“Ouch! You’re hurting me!” She tried to free herself. “They took your coffer and the money I earned through my trade with the governor’s wives.”
“That’s all?”
“What do you mean? It was everything we had!”
“Yes, of course. I was thinking of the furniture, china, and such,” he added hastily.
“Isn’t that bad enough? Let go of me! First thing tomorrow morning, I’m riding to Marrakesh to ask Abd al-Rahman to release you. So you see, I’m doing everything I can.”
“What? The sultan has agreed to see you?”
“Monsieur Rouston has arranged for an audience. He is going to escort me there and advocate for your release. The sultan trusts him more than any other foreigner in this country.”
Benjamin glared at her furiously. “You most certainly are not going to ride to Marrakesh with that slick Frenchman and make a laughingstock of me! I won’t allow it.”
“I’m afraid you will have to unless you want to stay on this island even longer,” she countered.
“I want nothing to do with Rouston,” he grumbled. But he expressed no further objections to her plan.
“Will you finally tell me if there is something to the accusations against you?” Sibylla urged. “Did you truly have human beings transported on my father’s ships and sold into slavery? You owe me an explanation, Benjamin.”
He swallowed hard and turned away. “I can’t believe what you’re accusing me of,” he muttered. “You’re no better than the qaid.”
“But I only want the truth!”
Benjamin turned to Sibylla and fixed his gaze as though he wanted to hypnotize her. “I swear that I could never do anything to harm the Spencer & Son Shipping Company or my family!”
She knitted her brow. “So that means that someone set you up. Was it Captain Brown? Samuel Toledano?”
“How should I know? Perhaps Toledano approached Brown and offered him a lot of money. I can’t monitor my captains while the ships are in the harbor. But as soon as I am free, I am going to do everything in my power to expose the guilty party!”
Sibylla let his words sink in. Brown was a sinister-looking character. But so were other captains. Her father was right when he said that the life at sea made a person cruel and solitary.
“I don’t know whom or what to believe anymore.”
Benjamin squeezed her hand so hard that it hurt. “Think about it, Sibylla! You told me yourself that the qaid’s people found no cash that could not be accounted for. What better proof of my innocence is there?”
He moved closer to her and pushed her backward onto the grass. Before she could react, he had rolled on top of her and was squeezing her breasts.
“Benjamin! Stop!” She struggled vehemently.
His face was flushed. “You are my wife,” he gasped, trying to fight back.
“The last few years, you’ve been calling Firyal for this sort of thing. Let me go!”
He rolled off her at last. “You knew?”
“You certainly took no pains to hide it.”
He lowered his head and drew imaginary shapes in the grass with his fingers. “Why do you even want to help me? Would you not prefer that I rot on this island?”
She sat up and smoothed her tunic. “I’m doing it for our children, Benjamin—only our children.”
Chapter Sixteen
Marrakesh, a few days later
The news that Sibylla Hopkins was riding to Marrakesh in the company of Rouston spread like wildfire among the merchants of Mogador. The men grinned and made suggestive remarks about the fiery Englishwoman, while the women whispered about her scandalous behavior.
Sibylla did not care a whit about the opinion of people who had been shunning her for months. Time was of the essence and so she had left the children in Nadira’s care. André had borrowed a fast horse from the French consul’s stable for her and they reached Marrakesh after four instead of the usual five days.
The sentries greeted Rouston like an old friend and immediately let them through the main gate. A short time later, Feradge, the head of the eunuchs and the ruler’s confidant, appeared. He told them that His Majesty was on a falconry excursion, but was expected back by evening and that he, Feradge, would personally ensure that His Majesty received his guests first thing the next morning.
He put André up in the guest pavilion in the magnificent royal garden, while Sibylla was permitted to stay in the harem quarters.
“Let us meet in front of my guesthouse after morning prayers,” André said when they took leave of one another. “Now you must rest. Tomorrow will be a strenuous day.”
“Magnifique! You are more beautiful than a queen!” he exclaimed when Sibylla showed up the following morning. She was wearing a dress made of royal blue embroidered silk, but without the matching sapphire jewelry, a wedding gift from her father, as those pieces had fallen into the hands of the qaid’s plundering henchmen. She had dressed English-style for her meeting with the ruler. André believed that Abd al-Rahman would hold her in higher regard if he could see from her attire that she belonged to the English upper classes.
André himself wore the uniform of a major in the Chasseurs d’Afrique and had pinned the medal for his service in the Algerian War on his light blue jacket.
“Abd al-Rahman still thinks of our military as the Grande Armée of Napoleon’s time, and as I am appearing before him today as a representative of the French government, I hardly wish to disabuse him of that misconception,” he explained somewhat sheepishly to Sibylla, who was looking at him admiringly.
Had the occasion not been so serious, the enchanting garden would have made it romantic indeed. The desert wind rustled in the silver leaves of the olive trees, birds were singing, fountains were burbling, and everywhere there was the scent of roses and mint, verbena, myrtle, and jasmine.
Sibylla took a seat next to André on the low marble bench in front of the guesthouse. “I doubt the sultan is going to value Benjamin’s freedom as highly as his own throne,” she said with some anxiety.
“We will have to play our cards carefully and pique his curiosity to such a degree that he will be prepared to pay this price for our information.”
“I am terribly nervous,” she confessed. “I’ve been telling myself that this audience is no different from bargaining for oranges at the souk—and I’m quite good at bargaining, I’ll have you know. Only that the merchant is the ruler of Morocco and the oranges are Benjamin’s head!”
André grinned. “I like the image of your husband’s head as an orange.”
“I’m not even sure that Abd al-Rahman is going to like my gift.” She looked at the expensive English saddle lying before her in the grass. Benjamin had had it made especially for his flame-colored stallion. Qaid Hash-Hash had confiscated the stallion, of course, but his henchmen had not taken the saddle. Benjamin would not be much pleased to discover that his saddle was now the property of the sultan. But she had had neither the time nor the money for another gift.
André g
ot up and straightened his uniform jacket. “Here comes Feradge. It’s time.” He extended his hand to Sibylla and helped her up.
“Phew,” she groaned. “I had forgotten how tight a bodice is!”
He smiled. “Chin up and shoulders back. And do not forget: I am by your side!”
“His Majesty will receive his guests in the lion’s court.” Feradge bowed to André and Sibylla. The corpulent man with ebony skin obviously loved resplendence and adornments. His brocaded cloak was embroidered with pearls and gems, and gold rings sparkled on his plump fingers. Sibylla suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to bring a present for the ruler’s favorite eunuch, and she could only hope he would not take offense. But Feradge was the epitome of graciousness as he inquired about the well-being of His Majesty’s guests and whether there was anything they lacked.
His movements were swift and lithe despite his size. Soon, they arrived at a wall and a large gatehouse made of reddish rammed earth, through which one reached another part of the garden. There were sentries from the Black Guards here too, and they respectfully bowed their heads as the small group hurried past.
They entered a courtyard surrounded by a colonnade and filled with a rectangular water basin. Sibylla noticed how pleasantly the water cooled the heat of the desert. “We are so close to the Sahara, and yet there is so much water here!” she marveled.
“His Imperial Majesty has it channeled here from the Atlas Mountains. In this way, he honors God, who has given the people water and thereby awakened the barren soil,” the eunuch explained with great dignity.
They had reached the end of the water basin and were passing an octagonal latticed pavilion. In it lounged a pair of lions watching the visitors with vigilant amber eyes. Sibylla had seen live lions only once before in her life, many years ago in a traveling menagerie of exotic animals in London. As she passed the bars, the male uttered a low warning growl. She looked at the powerful animal with the black-and-yellow mane and the deadly paws, bigger than two men’s fists.
The Lioness of Morocco Page 17