Ran Away (36 page)

He had only to turn his head away and say:
Sorry. I thought I saw someone I knew, but I was wrong
 . . . 

Ayasha had risked her life for a young girl who was alone and a slave, for the sake of her own memories of slavery and helplessness.

And the man who had let his mortal enemy go free into the world had been given back into the hand of that enemy, by those who said:
He must be guilty because he is a Turk. Because his skin is dusky and he does not worship as we do
.

January took another breath.
I have a wife and a son
, he said in his heart, to the man who had handed him that letter in that cellar in Paris  . . . 

Or to that man’s wife, and that man’s son.

God damn it
 . . . 

‘I don’t think the man who claims to be the Sultan’s representative from Havana is telling the truth,’ he said.

The other three only looked at him, not yet aware of what this meant.

‘Hannibal—’ He was surprised at how calm his own voice sounded. ‘Find Shaw at the Cabildo. Tell him to have the credentials of the Sultan’s representative checked. I have good reason to think they’re forged. The man who claims to have been sent by the consul in Havana is a man named Sabid al-Muzaffar, a personal enemy of Hüseyin Pasha’s, who means to cut Hüseyin’s throat and drop him overboard as soon as they’re clear of New Orleans. Tell Shaw what the Reverend Bannon said: that he should search Promise’s house as soon as he can, but that first he has to prevent Hüseyin Pasha from being taken on to that ship. All right? Rose—’

He stripped off his jacket as he spoke, followed by the cravat that he usually wore as a way of marking himself as different from the rough-dressed workers on the docks. ‘Find Natchez Jim. You know where he usually puts in, just below the market? Tell him I’m going aboard the
Najm
, in case Shaw isn’t at the Cabildo. Tell him to follow the
Najm
when she puts out, follow close enough that they don’t dare drop a body overboard. I’m going to try to free Hüseyin and go overboard with him. We’ll need Jim to pick us up.’

‘I’ll go with Rose,’ said Bannon. ‘Jim – he’s the owner of the
Black Goose
, isn’t he? – may need a couple more men, and I can probably find some on the dock who’ll go if I ask them—’

‘Another Centurion,’ mused Hannibal. ‘
I say to one Go, and he goeth
 . . .’

‘And I say to you
go
—’

‘And I goeth.’ The fiddler fished in the pocket of his old-fashioned cutaway coat and brought out a thin roll of tattered silk, which he placed in January’s hand. ‘I won these off Slippery Jovellanos at faro last week. You remember how to use them?’

Through the silk, like a little bundle of bones, January could feel the skeletal shapes of a set of picklocks. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’

‘I trust you’ve made your will,’ said Rose as Hannibal vanished among the sailors, drays, and cotton bales.

‘First thing when I get back.’

‘Fat lot of good that’ll do me when your mother claims the house.’ She added his waistcoat to the bundle.

‘Tell her I’ve left town and will be back in six months—’ January pulled off his boots: most of the men on the levee worked barefoot despite the cold, and he knew he couldn’t afford to replace them if he left them behind on the ship when he went over the side. ‘Then hire somebody to be me.’ He kissed her, swift and passionate – Bannon looked shocked – trying to keep his mind from the fact that he might very well get himself killed on the
Najm
.

That he might leave her a widow, Baby John an orphan.
And for what?

Do unto others as you’d hope to God somebody would have the decency to do unto you in this benighted country
 . . . 

From his boot he pulled his knife, which it was illegal for him to carry but which he was never without, and thrust it into his waistband, under his shirt. Then he glanced around, made sure no one was looking, and picked up the nearest sack from a pile left on the wharf. He joined himself on to a group of stevedores carrying similar sacks up the gangplank on to the black-hulled brig and didn’t look back.

The
Najm
was about a hundred feet long, of which less than eighty was deck. She was the kind of low-built, sleek vessel made for pirating among the islands; two years ago January and Rose had traveled to Mexico on a ship much like her. The crew – Cubans, in whom Spanish and Indian blood was mingled with greater or lesser degrees of African – clustered around the hatch amidships where the water kegs were being lowered. The forward hatch that would lead down to the forecastle was shut.

An awkward arrangement for the men who slept there  . . . 

The fo’c’s’le was the place January would have stowed a prisoner, particularly one he didn’t plan on taking farther than the river’s mouth at Balize.

He descended the aft companionway into deep gloom barred with dim daylight. Beyond a door, light from the open hatch showed him two crewmen settling the water barrels. There was little cargo, only stores; in this weather it could take a week to reach Havana. Two tiny cabins, barely closets, flanked the captain’s quarters behind him. One of them upon investigation belonged to the ship’s carpenter, whose chest contained a pry bar. The other – allotted to the mate – held a sea chest, the hasp of which January simply wrenched free with the bar. He had no idea how long it would take him to pick a padlock: Hannibal could do it in seconds, but his own time ranged from five minutes to infinity.

There was a pistol in the chest, and a horn of powder. He bent the hasp back, turned it to the wall. Worthless if he was going to remain on board for more than a few minutes  . . . 

And I have it on Bannon’s authority that the Bible says it’s perfectly appropriate to despoil the Egyptians
 . . . 

Men scrambled up the companionway to the deck. An officer shouted. Someone else bellowed in sloppy cane-patch French that
this is it, you lazy bozals, time to
ficher
this tub
 . . . 

One thing about brigs: it took a lot of men to set their sails, particularly against a headwind such as the one now blowing up from the Gulf. The currents around Algiers Point were treacherous, and the crew would be picking their way among steamboats, packets, ocean-going craft and wood boats like the
Black Goose
, all angling for space at the docks  . . . 

January stepped through into the now-empty cargo-hold, then through into the smaller hold just aft of the fo’c’s’le, where, as he had suspected, hammocks and sea chests taken from the fo’c’s’le had been heaped higgledy-piggledy, to clear the room for the prisoner. The hatch overhead was closed, increasing the gloom. He wriggled himself down between sacks of corn, barrels of water, pulled a couple of spare sails over himself. Something indignant wriggled away from his foot, and squeaked.
If worst comes to worst I can always claim I’m a slave on the run
 . . . 

If Sabid’s men didn’t remember his face as clearly as he recalled theirs.

Virgin Mary, Mother of God
, he prayed,
PLEASE let Rose have found Natchez Jim
.

PLEASE let Hannibal get to the Cabildo in time to speak to Shaw
 . . . 

Voices on the deck. The thick planking muffled them, but he heard feet descend the aft companionway a few moments later. Mingled with the creak of belt- and boot-leather, the clink of chains.

Hüseyin Pasha said something quietly in Osmanli, and, sharp and steely, the voice of Sabid al-Muzaffar replied.

They passed through the aft hold, and from his hiding place beneath the canvas, January caught a fragmentary glimpse of Hüseyin’s brown hand and torn and grimy green pantaloons. Sabid added something else as they passed him. Listening carefully – the purposeful uproar of launch had begun on the deck above – January heard the clack of a key in a lock, the woody creak of a door.

The jingle of chain. Another metallic clack.

Men passed him again and ascended the companionway to the deck. The decking underfoot dipped as the river took the
Najm
and they luffed away from the wharf.

Hannibal quite obviously hadn’t located Shaw. Perhaps – judging by the time it would take the fiddler to walk from the blue-water wharves to the Cabildo – he had met Sabid, his guards, and his prisoner on the way.

And here’s where Dauntless Dick charges into seventeen enemies armed with nothing but his sailor’s knife and his virtuous American courage
 . . . 

Through the wood of the bulkhead, he could hear Hüseyin praying. ‘
In the name of Allah, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord who is the Creator, Sustainer, and Guide of all the worlds  . . .  Thee alone do we worship, from Thee alone we seek help
 . . .’

Ayasha had taught January the words in Arabic, practically the only part of the Qur’an she knew by heart.

He slipped from beneath the sails, crossed to the shut door in two strides. Voices drifted down through the grilled hatch-cover: orders shouted in Spanish and Arabic, running feet, the creak of rigging. In his mind January pictured, like a desperate conjuration, the low dark shape of the
Black Goose
disengaging itself from the tangle of wood boats and keel boats and steamships and sloops, hanging off the
Najm’s
stern  . . . 

In his mind he made Sabid say to his officer:
We can’t kill him until we’re clear of the town
 . . . 

Hugging the wall – though there was little chance of anyone looking down through the hatch cover – he scrambled over boxes, sacks, kegs to the door.

‘
Sahib
Hüseyin!’ he hissed.

There was a judas in the padlocked fo’c’s’le door, but the blackness beyond it was impenetrable. The voice stopped, and metal clinked.

‘Hüseyin, it’s Janvier!’

A whisper from the darkness, ‘
Ya-allah
.’

January wedged the pry bar under the hasp, leaned on it with all his strength. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Bruises only, my friend. But the chain is locked to a staple in the wall. How many are with you?’

‘Just me.’

‘
Ya-allah
,’ said the Turk again. ‘They will come to fetch me soon, do not risk—’

‘Not ’til they’re clear of the shipping.’ January panted as he worked the pry bar deeper, braced shoulder and thigh against the door and pushed again. The wood gave with a splintery crack that he could have sworn was audible on the deck. ‘It’s the middle of the afternoon. Sabid will hardly dump a man’s body in full view of every steam packet and cotton importer from here to the Balize. He isn’t really working for the Sultan’s consul, is he?’

‘Would any official have set sail so promptly? I doubt the consul’s secretary has even yet put the Police Chief’s letter into the consul’s hand. No, Sabid has friends at the consulate in Havana, so heard of my misfortunes while he was in Vera Cruz. He pays well for information. He claims my arrest was none of his doing, but—’

‘He’s telling the truth.’ January pushed the door open, slipped into the tiny chamber as he fumbled from his trouser pocket the candle end he always carried, the tin of matches, and Hannibal’s picklocks. The cell was smaller than a whore’s crib and reeked of bilge water. The iron staple bolted into the wall would have needed an ax to chop loose. ‘Hold this.’

He pressed the pistol into Hüseyin’s hand, lit the candle. ‘And this. Good, it’s a slave shackle  . . .’

‘And this is a good thing, my friend?’

January bent over the iron tube, probed with the flattened T-bar picklock. ‘It’s a simple thing,’ he said grimly. ‘It has to be, because there are so many of them required for the trade. I have a collection of all the different sorts of screw keys – at present reposing in the storeroom under my house – but a friend showed me how to pick these  . . .  Got it.’ With delicate care, he turned the screw mechanism within the tube. Hannibal could pick this type of lock with one of Rose’s hairpins while carrying on a conversation about who had actually written the
Iliad
; January fought to keep those tiny, invisible pins in contact with the equally tiny probe.

‘One would think,’ murmured Hüseyin gently, ‘that you are versed in robbing other men of their property in this fashion.’

January glanced up at him, saw amused enlightenment in his eyes. ‘I’ve been known to violate a law or two, M’sieu.’

‘The ways of kismet are mysterious. If—’ His head turned sharply, and January heard it, too: feet on the companionway, voices in Spanish—

January blew out the candle, turned the picklock gently  . . .  Wrapped his hand around the loop of the shackle to muffle the grate of its teeth sliding from the iron tube. He heard his companion’s breath go out in a whisper of thanks, gave him his knife and thrust him against the bulkhead to the left of the half-open door, then stood to the right with the pistol held as a club.

For a split second he feared that the crewmen would simply turn around at the fo’c’s’le door and go back up to the deck:
My lord, the Turk has escaped
 . . . 

But they came running instead to make sure. January would have liked to let all of them come into the cell before attacking, but when the second man came through the door he had the wits to turn around and saw Hüseyin, cried out an instant before the Turk stabbed him. Thus January had to plunge out through the door – not knowing how many were outside – to keep them from simply slamming the door again. There was only one other in the forward hold and he’d already turned, racing for the companionway.

He was a small man, and fast, and used to moving with the pitching of the deck. But January knew that his own life was at stake, and the knowledge gave him wings. He leaped over barrels, boxes, kegs, caught the man a foot short of the bulkhead and slammed him against the timbers with all his force. Whether the blow killed him or not January didn’t know. He heard someone on deck above the open aft hatch shout something. Hüseyin burst from the cell at a dead run, bloodied knife in hand, and January raced full tilt through the aft hold, up the companionway –
if they close the hatch we’re dead men
 . . .