Somebody knew where to look for you.
Could Hardacre possibly be right?
Hamid Addisu.
The name in Kaddouri’s journal haunted him.
If he went home, he could demand a confrontation with Hamid directly, but making such an accusation risked setting families at war. The current king had no taste for confrontation. There would also be no certainty of support from other noble houses
But what if he was wrong and it was not him?
And yet, what of Kaddouri? What did he know? If Jonathan left now, he would never find out. And Hardacre had all but offered him a way to find out for certain.
Elias still watched him, thoughtfully.
Perhaps he could still have both. He’d arrange for a message to be sent to his cousin to forward to his family. They deserved to know – Mellesse’s family, too.
Jonathan looked back to Elias.
“I’m staying – for the moment.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
July 1811
“I fully understand, but if you can give me one more day, then I’m sure I can...” Morwena forced the words out.
The Englishman looked at her with annoyance.
“Well, I’m sorry, Miss, if you can’t fulfill your agreement on time then I have no choice but to purchase from somewhere else.”
She handed over the coins with bitter reluctance and watched the man tip his hat and walk out the door, the little bell tinkling as he did so.
She looked down at the empty wooden tray, blackened and polished over time with the amount of money changed over the years. That was nearly everything they had.
She closed the lid of the strongbox with a shaky hand. There was no hiding this from her father. If he checked the books against it, he would know a substantial sum was missing.
Morwena swallowed against a lump in her throat. What made her situation worse was she knew where all her goods were – locked in a warehouse she couldn’t get access to. And what made that even worse still was that she risked losing the lot if Nico couldn’t be found with the copy of the original lease.
You are ruined. The little voice whispered its contempt and showed her a cascade of images of her father’s wrath, of them losing their home and their business, of her being destitute on the street with the uncertain fate of a woman alone.
By the time the images exhausted themselves, she was left panting, as though she had actually run through the memories of what was to be.
“Morwena?”
She started at the sound of her name. Cettina stood before her. She had never even heard her friend come in.
“Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She opened her mouth and, for a distressing second, no words came out. Then she spoke.
“I have to go out.”
She was blind and deaf to anything other than her destination. Nico. Where was Nico? Where was that contract?
When she arrived at his rooms, he was nowhere to be seen.
***
It seemed the limitless energy of Captain Kit Hardacre did have its limits after all, Jonathan mused as he helped the crew secure the lines.
Hardacre hadn’t been seen since they left Benghazi. The crew carried on as normal, as if an absent captain wasn’t out of the ordinary. Jonathan considered asking Elias Nash, before deciding that Hardacre’s state of health was none of his business. If it was in any way serious, he’d have seen it on Preacher’s face.
A sailor slapped him on the back as he passed, a wordless thanks which Jonathan acknowledged with a lift of his chin.
After six months in Kaddouri’s prison with little to occupy his body or his mind, this felt good – the camaraderie of men he could trust.
And now, even Palermo was beginning to feel like home. He’d been here a dozen times now and every time he saw Mount Pellegrino loom over the horizon there was a strange sort of satisfaction that filled him.
Furthermore, he never tired of the city itself – its yellow, sandstone buildings rising up the streets to the verdant, green hills behind it. The surveyor in him recognized the signs of centuries of war – ancient defensive walls, some standing proud, some long overgrown, the mix of architectural styles, the familiar fashions of the east, the arches and tessellated walls, and the unfamiliar forms which must come from further north – the arches and fluted columns holding triangular gable ends high… he could spend a month here happily examining the form and structure of these buildings.
Perhaps Emperor Egwale Seyon would favor a report of cities and how they’re structured since his father had announced Gondar as the new capital of Ethiopia.
The sound of a piercing whistle drew his attention. All the crew, less its captain, gathered around Elias, who stood on a capstan above the huddle. Jonathan approached and listened.
“… four days shore leave…” The announcement was greeted with cheers. “See Mr. Grace for your wages.”
The men headed to the trestle table set up in the shade where they made their mark and collected their pay.
“Hey, Mr. Afua, catch!” Out of reflex more than anything else, Jonathan caught the small, leather-wrapped projectile that was lobbed his way.
“What’s this?”
“Your wages, man,” Elias answered. “You’ve earned them.”
Jonathan burst out laughing as he felt the weight of the bundled coins in his hand. This was the first time he’d been paid for his labors. Certainly, Gottleib had been generous with his payment to his African guides but, even so, it had taken even him a while to realize Jonathan didn’t need the payment. His family was one of the wealthiest in the country and, even as a younger son, his share of the family wealth was more than enough to sustain himself and a family.
It was the things his wealth couldn’t buy that fascinated him – the violin from Germany – and sheet music, the scientific instruments from England, the books in languages he attempted to master – once Gottleib had understood that, his gifts became more and more elaborate.
No, Jonathan couldn’t expect this group of sailors to understand and he wasn’t going to enlighten them.
“I’ve drawn up a list of supplies we’re going to need if we’re going to make Catallus habitable,” said Elias.
Jonathan took the list and whistled. “We’re going to need more than four days to find all of this.”
“And some of it may have to be ordered, too. Go up to Gambino’s and see what they have in stock. Anything they don’t have, we order and pick up when we’re next in port.”
Jonathan examined the list in greater detail. “If you’re serious about Catallus and Hardacre is serious about hunting down Kaddouri, it wouldn’t hurt to have a storehouse of your own here – somewhere you can stop prying eyes from looking, if you know what I mean.”
Elias concurred with a nod of his head.
“Where is our captain, by the way?”
The Englishman’s expression changed, his mouth thinned a little. “Don’t worry about Kit, he’ll be well enough in a few days. I’ll keep an eye on him. You go and place the equipment order.”
***
“Nico!”
Morwena bit back a few hasher epithets as she searched through his few possessions – she even lifted the mattress and braved a bundle of dirty clothes to see if she could find the contract she had left with him for safe keeping at his insistence.
“You can’t take it with you,” he’d told her. “What if Father found it?”
And, like a fool, she had gone along with it.
Morwena took one last glance around the room as if a secret hiding place might somehow reveal itself to her. It didn’t.
Think!
She worried her lip a moment. The only thing to do was to go there herself and demand the release of her goods.
Che palle! What balls!
With her anger now good and stoked, Morwena made the eight hundred yard journey without a clear memory of how she did it. She hurried her steps as she saw a man pad
lock the side door to the warehouse. She pulled breath into her lungs and yelled.
“You there!”
The man halted his actions, and Morwena hurried her pace.
“My goods are in there and I want them out!”
The man before her was in his forties, not quite as tall as she, but much, much larger.
He looked her up and down. When his head raised once more, a sneer curled his lips.
“Go away, girlie, this is no place for you.”
“The name is Gambino and you have my iron goods in there. I will not move until you open that door!”
The man seemed to take that as a challenge.
“Is that so, little girl? The name’s Gambino, eh? Well, by rights, those goods belong to me for non-payment of rent.”
The gates of hell seemed to have opened up. She could feel the heat of it penetrate the soles of her shoes, up her legs, and well in her chest. A volatile mixture of anger and fear became a combustible combination that exploded with her stinging slap across the man’s face.
“Stronzo!”
The man reacted badly to being called an asshole; his face flushed as red as hers.
Morwena continued, “You are a cheat and a liar – I paid… my brother and I paid, three months’ rent in advance. How dare you tell me that you are confiscating my goods! You are a thief!”
She received a slap across the face in return, and the pain on her right palm was nothing compared to the monstrous wave of hurting that deafened her left ear and scalded her cheek.
“Get out of here before I do worse to you, little girl,” the man growled. “No man calls me a cheat. Perhaps you should talk your useless brother, Nico, and let it be a lesson to you to stay out of men’s business. Go home, get a husband to keep you in line. Let him fill your belly with bambinos.”
The blistering heat from hell now flooded both cheeks so her lungs were bellows stoking the flames with every breath she took.
“I want my goods now.” The order was delivered in a low voice, no less firm because of its volume.
“That’s not going to happen for you, little girl.”
“I’m not leaving until I get what’s mine.”
“Is that so?”
Coming from the front of the warehouse were approaching footsteps.
“Nico!” she called out and glanced back to see the storeman take a step forward toward her.
The tall figure that approached now stopped and remained at a distance, keeping himself part in shadow. Morwena pushed forward.
“Nico!”
The storeman grabbed her arm as she tried to pass. Perhaps, the other person was just someone who only looked like Nico. Who was he? Perhaps, he was in league with this thief. From the great, hot height of her anger, she plunged into the icy depths of terror. Against one man, she might have a chance – after all, one did not grow up with two brothers without knowing something about keeping males in line – against two, however…
She let out an ear-piercing scream that started from the bottom of her lungs. Instead of pulling away, she caught the storeman off guard by pushing at him, using her free hand to start boxing his ears.
While she struggled to break his grip, she became conscious of running footsteps coming toward them. The man squeezed her arm before sweeping up the other one to defend himself. “Get away from me, you crazy buttana!”
Morwena shrieked once more.
***
The sound of the scream was as though someone had cut him in two. It was the sound of terror from a woman in fear of her life. It was Mellesse’s scream.
Jonathan took off toward it at a run, merely guessing down which alley in the maze of warehouses and dock buildings the sound had come from. He rounded the corner and saw two figures struggling. The woman screamed again.
Before he knew it, his hand was circling the neck of the man and shaking him like a doll.
“Let go of her!”
The man swiftly got the message and pushed the girl away from him as hard as he could, but she weighed back in, aiming a punch at his chest.
Jonathan stepped between the feuding pair. “Hey! Enough!”
“That man has stolen from me!” Jonathan looked at the girl for the first time. Correction – a woman, not the girl as he first thought.
“Get this crazy bitch away from me! She’s mad! She’s scratched my face!”
Jonathan ignored the whining man and focused his attention on the woman. Large, brown eyes that somehow seemed familiar stared up at him. But the face was different, the color of the skin, the shape of the nose, black hair that did not have magnificent curls.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, keeping the question simple. He was not certain of his Sicilian to be sure he was understood.
She shook her head, the composure already returning to her face. Then she lifted her head as regally as a queen and pointed to her assailant.
“Six weeks ago, I paid this man three months’ rent to store my goods. Now he will not let me get my goods and threatens to confiscate them.”
The man looked no less angry, but he was wary and, indeed, there was a red gash down his cheek.
“This is none of your business, moor. This is business between me and the girl.”
“Manhandling an unwilling woman makes it my business. Is it true? Are you defrauding her?”
“Of course not!” The man’s answer was dismissive, bordering on contemptuous, and it was all directed at the woman in front of him. “Her brother paid me for one month when he should have paid me for three. And, like a stupid man, I agreed when he promised to pay the rest at the end of the first month.”
“I gave Nico enough to pay three months,” the woman replied, naming an amount.
The man nodded. “That was the sum agreed.”
Although the sun had hours to go before setting, the look in the young woman’s face appeared as though the daylight had been extinguished. The weight of coins at his pouch seemed heavier at this moment.
“I’ll pay the overdue balance.” Jonathan reached for the string and the man looked mollified.
“No,” the woman interrupted. “I will not let a stranger take responsibility for my family’s shame.”
The portly storeman sighed. Jonathan was beginning to feel sympathy for the man.
“Will you give the young lady two more days?”
After a long put-upon sigh, the man nodded. “Against my better judgment,” he said, double checking the lock on the door and making his way down the side of the building before disappearing around the corner.
Both watched the man leave in silence.
“Well, thanks a lot!” she said. “All you’ve done is given me one more sleepless night of worry!”
Jonathan realized why the woman looked familiar. She was the one from Gambino’s ironmonger store. He was on his way there when he heard her scream. He wondered whether he’d even heard her first name before. He looked down at her.
She still looked angry, so perhaps now wasn’t a good time for introductions.
He smiled inwardly. She reminded him of a kitten he’d once found when he was a boy. It had been abandoned by its mother, or perhaps it was the only remaining survivor of the litter. It spat and hissed at him from its hiding spot and displayed its claws in a defensive display he thought was brave, foolish, and charming all at once.
“So what is your plan, now that you’ve learned your quarrel is with your brother and not with the storeman?” he asked.
“I don’t know why I’m talking to a stranger,” was her reply.
“We’re not strangers, you know, and you didn’t answer my question.”
“Look here. Thank you for coming to my rescue, but it’s not my habit to involve people in my problems.”
Those eyes met his again and something inside him shifted. She had pride, he understood that, and already had earned his respect for it, but still…
He saw the moment a spark of recognition lit her eyes.
“The Terpsich
ore – you’re one of the English pirate’s crew!”
He laughed at her rather accurate description of Hardacre, and was delighted to see a hint of humor return to her features as well
“Indeed I am and freshly arrived back in Palermo. Where would you recommend a poor hungry sailor go to eat?”
The change of subject surprised her, as he had intended, and the additional color in her pale cheeks intrigued him. She laughed and it was a warm, throaty sound.
“Most people would introduce themselves properly,” she said. “My name is Morwena Gambino.”
Jonathan bowed as he had once been told by Gottleib was the correct etiquette in Europe.
“My name is Tewodros Afua – but I am more commonly known by the name Jonathan. May I escort you back to town?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Morwena hesitated a moment, looking back down the alleyway where her brother had stood and done nothing as she struggled with the storeman. When she looked back at the man who had come to her rescue, his friendly face had closed somewhat, as though he was ready to be dismissed.
She hastened to reassure him.
“I’d be delighted to have your escort,” she said. His smile in response cheered her much more than it should have. It was a hope she didn’t deserve under the circumstances. She shook her head.
“You must think I am very rude. Just before you arrived, I thought I had seen my brother in the alley, and I’d wondered why he didn’t come to help me.”
“Are you sure it was your brother? It might have been someone who simply looked like him.”
“True, but what kind of man would stand there and not help a woman in distress? And yet…” She shook her head again and started back on the road toward the center of town.
“And yet what?”
“It’s nothing – certainly not of an interest to you.”
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