“The bastinado?” she whispered.
“It was thought prudent to wring a confession from me, one way or another. They failed to succeed only because their time ran out. I did not come here to enlist your sympathy by my complaints, however. I came to present myself to you as your lowliest servant for as long as you have need of me and Allah wills.”
“There is no need, Basim. I did not ask that you be freed from prison only to have you become a slave to me.”
“There is every need, fair mistress. To see to your safety and happiness was a task laid upon me by my master, Mehemet Dey. I could not shirk it even if I wished, which I do not. For the freeing of my poor self from prison, I owe you much devotion, and I am sworn both to myself and to Reuben Effendi to protect you.”
“As you will then, Basim. It may be that I will have need of protection. But, who is this Reuben of whom you speak?”
“Reuben is the new Muslim name chosen by the one who was known as Rudyard. The rites which have made him one of the faithful are over. You are no longer the slave of a slave, but the property of a free man.”
Rud a Muslim. She could not blame him for converting to the faith of his captors. She had been in Islam long enough to know that conversion was his only chance of gaining his freedom. The change was not such a great one, after all; the Allah of the Mussulman and the God of the Christian were the same, only the prophets were different. What would the effect be? That would depend on Rud. Beneath his robes and Moorish trappings, he was still an Englishman. Or, was he? After the passage of so much time, she could not say.
“I see,” Julia said slowly. “Why has he not returned here? Why has he sent you and not come himself?”
“He may not lie with a woman now for many weeks. To remove himself from temptation, and at the same time serve his friend and master Ali Dey, he has put to sea on a voyage of great importance.”
“Put to sea? He is already gone?”
“Even so, my lady.”
“He could have come to tell me himself and to say goodbye,” she said, her voice tight with what she recognized, and deplored, as disappointment.
“It was not permitted. Reuben Effendi appointed me his spokesman and entrusted to me a purse of dinars for the purchase of food and other comforts, and also a letter and a package for you.”
“A letter? Why didn’t you say so?” She reached for it, almost snatching it from his small hand. Reading it brought no comfort. It said little more than Basim had been able to tell her. It instructed her to see to Isabel, to trust to Basim to purchase food and drink from the vendors who came daily to the back gates of the palace, and to take care of herself. No date was given for his return. It was signed only with his initial.
As Julia and Basim spoke, Isabel had crept nearer and nearer. Julia knew she could banish the girl, drive her away with a few sharp words. At the sight of her round brown eyes filled with woe, however, she did not have the heart. Instead, she read the note aloud, translating the English phrases as she went for the girl’s benefit. With a small sob, Isabel turned and stumbled from the room. Julia stared after her, shaking her head, before turning her attention to the package which had accompanied the note. Her fingers trembled slightly as she drew back the paper to reveal a small, beautifully worked knife of damascened steel. Its hilt was of gold encrusted with precious stones. The scabbard which held it was not of such fine workmanship as the blade itself, but it brought a smile to Julia’s lips. Made of burnished Cordovan leather, it bore a design of flowers, leaves, and scrolls set around an open oval. In the center of the oval was depicted a honey bee poised to sting.
She stood staring at the knife for long moments until Basim once more drew her attention to himself. “It is well that we are alone, for there is a serious matter that I must put to you, O fair one.”
“Speak on, Basim,” she said, absently caressing with her thumb the rubies, diamonds, and sapphires which bejeweled the knife.
“You know that my master, Mehemet Dey, may his soul take joy in paradise, did not mean for you to be enslaved again. By a foul plot, his wishes were set aside. It is well that your new master pleases you — still, I can do no more than attempt to carry out the last command of my old master before I surrender my will to you, bright mistress. I have the means of effecting your removal. Safely hidden away where only I can find it is wealth enough to secure your safe passage to the land whence you came, or else to establish you here like a princess in a great house with many servants. Before I can act, you must tell me what is your wish.”
Julia stared at him, her eyes searching the waiting solemnity of his face. Basim made what he was suggesting sound certain, and yet, she was not fool enough to think that she would be allowed to leave so easily. No matter how magnanimous the new dey, he would not like to let any form of riches slip from his grasp, especially for the use of a slave girl. The property that had belonged to Mehemet Dey he would regard as his own, regardless of a dying man’s wish. He would consider it theft if it was removed against his will. If they were caught, the penalty for this crime would be severe. Could she permit Basim to risk so much for her sake?
There was one other important consideration. Rud was no longer a slave, but neither was he entirely free. After what had happened between them, could she go and leave him behind?
“I don’t know, Basim. I must consider,” she said after a time.
This answer the dwarf accepted without the least sign of displeasure. ‘“There can be no harm in that,” was his formal reply. Salaaming, he left her.
Ali Dey, perhaps as a gesture of honor toward Rud, perhaps as a recompense for sending him from Julia, directed a covey of servants to the apartments occupied by Julia. They included a cook and two serving women, all three of middle-age and a monumental ugliness. A pair of eunuchs was posted outside the door as continual guards. Julia, weighing the idea that they may have been suggested by Rud, considered sending them away. She dismissed the idea reluctantly. It would not do to insult the new dey, if by chance the gift of protection had been his alone.
Julia, though careful not to act as if she meant to try to supplant Isabel, began slowly to make her influence felt. Her first move was a cleaning campaign. She did not criticize the Circassian girl’s housekeeping ability, or even those of the former occupants, in order to obtain the removal of the accumulated grime of centuries. She only hinted that the men of Frankistan were repelled by filth and odors, regardless of dim lights and perfume censers. Isabel, ashamed she had not realized this important fact, entered into the proceedings with a will, sweeping the other serving women with her. Basim, with the threat of a curse backed by his magic, was able to persuade the eunuch guards to lend their assistance.
Gray swags of spider webs were swept from the vaulted ceiling and wads of caked dirt raked from the corners of the rooms. The brass necessary chamber vessels were washed and scalded instead of merely emptied. Scrubbing the dust and soot from the walls brought forth in places brilliant-hued mosaic murals as beautiful as they were lascivious. A number of these were found in the bath. Here also they attacked with soap and water, rubbing the tiled surfaces with sand to free them of their ancient layer of scum before treating the mildew that abounded with quicklime and lemon juice. The introduction of a cat into the kitchen considerably lessened the rodent and insect life. Further, on pain of strict punishment for failure, Julia required that all who touched food wash their hands, and wash and scald each dish after each use. Tiring of explaining the reasoning for these last measures, Julia fell back on her first strategy — the necessity of pleasing Rud, plus obeying an ancient tribal law of both her own and Rud’s people. This Isabel, Basim, and the others found easy to understand. They obeyed the edicts scrupulously thereafter.
Chests, tables, couches, rugs; all were arranged and rearranged. New bed curtains were needed, Julia found, and one of the divans in the gulphor could use a replacement for its cover. For the moment, however, she was satisfied with the inside of the rooms. Next, they
must tackle the garden. The tiredness caused by the physical labor, as much of it as the others allowed her to do, helped her to fall asleep at night.
In the course of the upheaval, Julia grew close to the women of the household. She made friends of the serving women and the cook, learning in the periods when they sat down to rest where each woman came from and how she had come to be a slave in the palace. Gradually, they lost their awe in her presence and began to chatter as naturally as the cooks and housemaids, the laundresses and nannies she had known on her father’s plantation so many years ago. This process of shared work and conversation had one other benefit also. Led by Basim, all concerned turned to Julia for orders and instruction. Slowly, she came to be looked upon as the mistress. Painlessly, almost without the girl noticing, Isabel was set aside and her place taken by the elder slave, the bed mate of Reuben Effendi.
The installation of a cook in the kitchen had the effect of freeing Isabel from her main task. With little else to occupy her, she began to seek Julia out, forgetting that they had been in some sense rivals and treating her like a friend or older sister. As the days passed, Julia learned more of the girl’s background. With her twin brother, she had been stolen during a slave raid and brought, after a long and weary journey, to Algiers. They had been bought within hours of their arrival by Kemal. Isabel had been separated at once from her brother. Since that time, she had known nothing except a brief stay in his quarters before being transferred to Rud’s old rooms. She was, therefore, intensely curious about the palace, the harem, the new dey, and the style of life led by those close to the throne.
“Is the harem larger than these apartments, the rooms given to Reuben Effendi?” she asked, her eyes gleaming.
“Much larger,” Julia answered, pressing her lips together to keep from smiling.
“Is the garden more extensive?”
Julia described the lush, verdant promenade allotted to the women of the dey in detail.
“A pool large enough for a hundred women to bathe in during the heat of summer. It must be magnificent. Were there peacocks?”
“Yes, there were peacocks. And, turtle doves. And all manner of songbirds.”
“It is said the jewelry of the wife of the old dey, Fatima, filled a half dozen coffers. Can such a thing be true?”“
“She certainly had jewels, how many I cannot say.”
“They speak of a single ruby nearly as large as the fabled gem worn in the turban of the great than of Tartary—”
“All things are possible,” Julia quoted with a smile, reaching for a date from the fruit stand beside her.
“To be the wife of the dey would be a wondrous thing. A woman need never worry again. Do you regret that Mehemet Dey never asked you to marry him?”
“No,” Julia said with a quick shake of her head. She was happy she had never had to make the choice of telling the truth or committing bigamy. Despite what she had said to Rud, she would have willingly risked her soul before she would have condemned him to death.
“I would have wanted to kill myself when he died without speaking the words that would have made me his wife,” Isabel said with youthful extravagance. “I most certainly would have expired with fright if I had been taken to the barracks afterward. Were you frightened, Jullanar?”
“I was frightened,” Julia admitted, her golden gaze clouding as she looked away.
“Forgive me! I should have my tongue torn out with red-hot pincers for reminding you. All is well now. Reuben Effendi rescued you and brought you here where you are safe.” As if the aftermath of that rescue hovered in the girl’s mind, she went on. “They say you never shared the bed of Mehemet Dey. Do you suppose that is why he did not marry you?”
“I cannot say, in all truth. He was not a young man, nor a well one.”
“Do you regret that he was incapable? Would you not have fared better if he had been as young and virile as Ali Dey?”
“Who can tell? Ali Dey might not like blonde women.”
“Oh, do not say so!” Isabel cried, raising her hands to clutch at her golden-sand curls. “Never say such a thing!”
The girl’s antics banished Julia’s momentary mood of darkness. She sent her a quick amused glance. “I understand the dey already has the four wives allotted to him.”
“One is sickly, a poor skinny thing of no spirit,” the Circassian girl said at once. “She is a Thracian, with sallow skin and muddy brown hair. She may die. Or, since she is childless, the dey might come to think it would be a good idea to divorce her.”
“And, you belonging to someone else,” Julia commiserated with gentle mockery.
“Yes,” Isabel said on a great sigh, then brightened. “But I still have my virginity.”
Julia nearly choked on the date pit. “That is — lucky,” she said when she could speak.
The girl agreed complacently. “At first, I thought of slitting my own throat, because first Kemal scorned me and gave me away to a lowly slave, and then, the slave, Reuben Effendi, also did not desire me. Now, I see that our master had you in his eyes, blinding him to my beauty. I perceive it is my kismet to remain a pure maiden until such time as I will be taken by a great man.”
If this was the fantasy with which the girl consoled herself, Julia would do nothing to destroy it. “I see,” she said with a grave nod. “No doubt it is so.”
Another time Isabel, bringing a cushion and sitting at Julia’s feet, began, “Did you enjoy sharing the couch of Reuben Effendi?”
“Why do you ask?” Julia hedged. She could not seem to get over being surprised at the outspokenness of the women of the east. No subject was sacred to them, no question too personal to venture.
“At first, when I knew he had taken you under his blanket to slake his lust, I felt slighted and even envious of your closeness, as I have said before. At the same time, I was glad.”
“Because it allowed you to remain a virgin?” Julia asked, with a shade of gentle irony.
Isabel’s smooth pink mouth curved into a smile also. “Not entirely. I was glad I need not worry anymore about such a frightening thing coming to me.”
“I see.”
“No, no! It is not being with a man that causes my knees to quake and my throat to close so tightly I cannot speak. It is Reuben Effendi!”
“What do you mean?” Julia frowned a little as she searched the girl’s round face.
“He is not like other men, my Lady Jullanar. At least, not like the men I knew when I was a girl at home in my village. He is of the Frankistani, his body broader and taller than that of a Moor or a Turk, or even of the men of my own people. Surely, he has more strength in his loins than a young girl like myself can support. Also, he never beat me or raised his voice in anger, showing always a control of his temper that cannot be natural. His skin is pale beneath his clothing, and unpleasant to see where the sun has not touched it, and the peculiar sea-blue color of his eyes must surely have been stolen from an afreet.”
Julia pursed her lips. “You do not find him handsome?”
“Yes, as a statue is handsome, or a god, and yet, strange beyond knowing.”
“He is only a man,” Julia replied, “with a man’s need for love and comfort and the nearness of a woman.” She spoke instinctively, without deep thought, and yet, the truth of her words spread through her like a balm. Had she not, in her own way, been as impressionable about Rud as Isabel? For too long, she had viewed him as a monster; like Isabel’s afreet, a devil who used people and betrayed them without feeling or conscience. That was not true.
“He loves like other men, then?” Isabel insisted.
“It seems so.”
“And you enjoyed it?”
“Yes,” Julia answered, her eyes like twin pools of stillness. “Yes, I did.”
~ ~ ~
It was a dull rainy winter. Little enlivened the gloom. Forbidden to view the audiences of the dey by simple lack of an invitation, tired of reading, needlework, and housekeeping, Julia’s temper grew short.
She snapped at everyone. Isabel’s unremitting chatter began to grate on her nerves, as did Basim’s eternal deference and air of patient waiting for her as yet unmade decision. Her nights, now that the chore of cleaning was done, were disturbed. The brief rekindling of old ardor, the awakening of dormant impulses, had upset her. Far better to have remained as she was, in the dreary habit of abstinence. In addition, there was the smell of smoke on the night wind again as fighting broke out here and there in the town. The search for Kemal continued without success. Men were arrested in their dozens and disappeared into the torture rooms of the palace; still, no one could produce the grandson of Mehemet Dey.
The lack of security kept the court and the city in a turmoil, making Ali Dey more harsh in his judgments, more unyielding in his leadership than he might otherwise have been. Snubs were administered to older men intent on advising the inexperienced ruler. Others, such as the commander of the Janissaries and a number of the court nobles, were slighted or ignored. Soon, the odor of malcontent drifted about the palace corridors.
In such a situation, any small change of routine was greeted with relief; a major incident could bring euphoria. The note from Jawharah was a major incident.
What made the missive outstanding was not so much the news it contained, though Julia was ecstatic to learn that her friend from the harem had married a dealer in rugs and was pleased with her situation. It was the promise inherent in the last sentence which caused such excitement. “I will be happy,” Jawharah had written, “to have you visit me.” Until her gaze had alighted upon that last phrase, it had not occurred to Julia that the purdah imposed upon her as Rud’s woman was not as strict as that which kept the harem of the dey from viewing the world and being viewed by it. It was actually possible, with the permission of her master, for her to go into the city. Since Rud was not present to say her nay, she would go. There was, for excuse, the matter of the bed curtains and the new cover for the divan. There were the souks and bazaars to be explored, sights to behold and friends to meet, a world of novelty to relieve her boredom. She would go at once!
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 39