Swords From the Sea (66 page)

"Paul," she said in a breath, "I am not going back. If I have helped you, then do one thing for me."

Munching his laden bread, he nodded. "A passage on a ship, Marie Anne?"

Her head went back, and he felt her eyes searching his face. "That was clever. Yes. I cannot pay the fortune they ask-even if there were a place left. But-"

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen, truly-"

"Say fifteen. You are young to be running away from your sister."

"Not from Hortense. She says a roof is a roof, and there are worse. But I will not spend another night under that roof."

Marie Anne must have packed her bundle of belongings days before. And she must have tested carefully the escape route from the veranda. She meant what she said.

"Have you any place to go, mademoiselle?"

Impatiently she shook her head, throwing away the fruit at which she had been nibbling. "Have you ever waited like a beggar for your place at somebody's table, set with silver plate? On my veranda I would think about a ship coming in with a white clean deck and seagulls swooping over the filled sails. The men who worked the sails had kind eyes." Her own eyes brightened, and her supple lips parted as she coaxed Paul. "Then today at noon for the first time I saw a strange ship anchored far out, an American ship, and you-"

"The Argus is a vessel of war," he began to explain, "and cannot take passengers."

"I know. But English officers are embarking their wives and families. Have you a sister, Paul?"

"Only brothers."

"I thought so. Paul, the thing I would like you to do is not too difficult. Please listen, and think how it might easily be done."

He listened, knowing at once that it could not be done. How carefully she had planned it! For him to take her out to the Argus, pretending that she was betrothed to marry him. To request passage for her to a safe port.

Reading his face even as she begged, she whispered: "It will be so easily done. I have a ring, and I would be no trouble on shipboard. I promise. Paul, what have you to do except to say a few words? You do not even have to pretend to like me. And then you can forget it-as you say-because we will not see each other again, ever! And the American officers-they would find a place for the betrothed of a countryman."

Ironically, Marie had made her request to the one man who could not carry it out. Paul almost laughed, thinking of shrewd, cautious Isaac Hull, newly in command of the brig, faced by a Lieutenant Bainbridge who was presumed to be in Sicily on sick leave-with a request for accommodation for a mysterious French bride-to-be.

"The commandant of the brig," he said carefully, "would not do it. I know him."

"Well, then we will go to the man who can order him to do it."

Staring at her, Paul wondered if she were not even then trying to get information from him. "Who?" he demanded.

"Your agent who is here-Eaton."

He could not believe she had spoken the name of the person he had to find and meet. In a flash he realized that in her he had a guide to Eaton; and a pretext for approaching him.

Sensing a new mood in him, Marie was explaining all in a breath: "The one the Arabs call Drub-Devil, because he would beat even a devil-"

"How far away is he?"

"A half-hour's ride." Marie no longer coaxed. Some dread in the depth of her hardened and hurried her words. "All our spies, and those of Tripoli, swear that he is in the city with money to spend to raise an armed force to go against Tripoli. And do not tell me that your ships will not obey him. They must."

As Paul pondered, he was aware of something familiar in the throng that pushed past them, going from stall to stall. The towering doorkeeper of the Spaniards stood still, a biscuit's toss away. Apparently the black had not sighted the two fugitives from His Excellency's table; but as Paul watched him, he turned back quickly into the dimness of the souk. When Paul nudged the girl and nodded at the retreating figure she exclaimed: "He saw us!"

Gathering up her bundle, whispering to Paul to follow, she slipped into the crowd, almost running from the arcade into an alley. There she called: "Arabaji-arabaji!"

Out of the darkness a shabby chaise rattled up, the native driver hauling in two thin horses, who required no urging to stop.

"I lied to you," Marie told him unexpectedly when the vehicle started off with them at a sluggish canter. "My friends of the legation no doubt were looking for us long since. But I wanted those few minutes to talk to you."

She had contrived to feed him and put her case to him quickly enough. Soon, she assured him, they would be safe enough, with William Eaton.

"You seem very sure you can find him."

"Why not?" She laughed a little. "Even your Drub-Devil cannot walk away from his villa through a battalion of Turkish infantry with orders to keep him jailed."

To Paul it was fantastic that this child should know so much of the doings of a great town-as fantastic as that he should be riding with her in this hired rig-or that Marie should be holding out a ring to him, pressing it into his hand. Saying: "Now is your chance to plight your troth to Marie Anne D'Aliermont. I assure you that my family was honorable, once. And my heart has not been touched by the fine eyes of any other man." Excitement edged her voice; she seemed to beg him to be merry with her. "So will you pledge marriage with me? Say it! It is not as hard taking sulphur and salts, sir."

"It's not true."

"What I am telling you is true."

"About any betrothal. I'm-I can't lie to Eaton." Her head turned as if he had struck her. "Marie, I'll do my best to get you a passage on some vessel. I promise that."

Her hand withdrew, and she seemed to draw away from him. After a moment she asked quietly, "Do you wish me to request entrance here?"

Their rig had slowed to a walk where trees loomed over a courtyard wall. At the open gateway Marie slipped down, and following her, he found her questioning an officer whose epaulets shone faintly in the starlight. Not a word of their speech did he understand. But when Marie put something that clinked faintly into the hand of the officer, his answers became more fluent.

No light showed within the gate. When Marie turned back to their carriage she seemed puzzled.

"Gone," she said. And: "Your Drub-Devil got away after all. The Ak- inpasha-the major swears that your clever Eaton went out only for a walk, with all eight of his Marine escort, who presented their muskets when the Akinpasha stopped them. But I think they bribed him, and told him a good story."

"We could wait for him inside."

Dubiously Marie shook her head. "The Turks have been waiting all day and part of this night. Where could they have gone, that no one saw them? "

Not out to the Argus, Paul reflected. And certainly nine Americans in uniform could not have wandered the streets without being observed. His own experience had shown-he remembered the omniscient Eugene Leitensdorfer, who had been in touch with Eaton.

"The people at my lodging," he told Marie, "might help us."

Chapter Four

Yet the coffee-house was as deserted as the villa. When they had steered toward Pompey's pillar above the cemetery, and thence into his street, he found Seliin and even the drum gone from the public room. He saw that the muskets had disappeared from the kitchen, the sergeant from the back door, the bread from the stove. Only the native woman remained, setting a place for him at the table. She moved sluggishly, her face swollen as if she had been weeping.

Clumsily he tried to question her about Eugene. Out of her answers he caught only a phrase she repeated, something about Arabs, he thought.

Returning to the carriage, he found Marie waiting inside the empty courtyard. There, he noticed, she could see into the inn. She had not trusted him beyond her sight.

Putting his valise and book beneath the seat of the chaise, he said irritably: "My companions have absconded like Eaton. And Eugene's native wench says only one word, like a parakeet-"

With a flash of temper, Marie whirled on him.

"She is not a wench or a parakeet, but Eugene's wife, in Alexandria. I do not know how many other wives he has in what places. But she is a better Christian than I am, and I think he has left her again. What was the word she tried to tell you?"

"It sounded like boorja arab."

"Burj al Arab. That means the Arab's Tower. It is the place, Monsieur, where the caravans come in from the desert." Her anger made the words echo clearly. "It is also far out of the city, near the sea, perhaps five leagues from here ... Well, what is your pleasure now?"

The silence of the street weighed on him. He heard only the broken sound of the woman's sobbing. Evidently Eugene had taken with him after nightfall all the skulkers who had kept hidden during the day-and William Eaton had departed somewhere out of sight with his Marine escort. It might be only coincidence, but Paul had no other trace of the man he sought.

Frowning, he tried to guess the actions of the naval agent-a quicktempered sergeant in the Revolutionary War, who had taught school in Connecticut to educate himself-usually in trouble with his superiors, calling them "abject chameleons" when he had been obliged as Consul in Tunis to make the yearly payments of tribute to the corsair Beys, whom he called "insatiable as death." Now that war had come at last, he was straining to raise an armed force in Egypt with the aid of a friendly Arab prince, and with that force to strike those same Beys by land ... Yes, Eaton might well have enlisted even Leitensdorfer's batch of irregulars, who had set out for the Arab's Tower ...

"Hadjali," Marie told him, "saw you enter this place. He is what we call a renegade, because he protects himself by serving the Barbary powers-as Hortense and I earn our keep by being useful and pleasant to the Spaniards. Both Hortense and Hadjali saw you leave here, while they were observing the antics of the talented Eugene. In consequence, at any moment a search may arrive to find you communing with the stars-"

"Can you tell our driver to take me out the Arab's Tower?"

It exasperated Paul that he had to call upon this brat of a girl to help him at every turn. He had not thought she would take her seat beside him again, as she did, reminding him that she had no other place to go, and that he had made her a promise.

When the gleam of water opened before the chaise, and the lantern of a sentry was lifted to light the carriage, Marie covered her face against the light, and the guard waved them on. "He took us for an English milord, and a girl of the streets," she explained. "And at least, Hadjali will not be certain we went this way."

Yet as the wheels rumbled over the planks of a bridge, she laughed, saying that here in this canal she had come to Africa years before, a spoiled child, in a barge with music playing and the Tricolor flying ... Her father, a division commander on Menou's staff, had sent for his two motherless daughters, from France-to live like princesses in Africa, until Napoleon vanished in a courier vessel, and the remnant of the army was left to destruction, her father dying in the plague.

"Hortense was brave, Monsieur; she protected me even as she made dresses for me out of our treasure of Oriental stuffs. You know so little of women, you would not understand the difference that comes between them when a younger sister grows up.

"When you are not voyaging in Egypt," Marie asked unexpectedly, "what do you do?"

He hesitated. "I want to be a teacher, Mademoiselle D'Aliermont."

At that she was silent, drawing into her corner of the seat, aware that he had lied, telling herself that she could not trust this young American, in spite of his honest eyes. Something within him was merciless-some secret thing. Marie Anne did not understand how that could be. Yet instinctively she understood that it was both foolish and dangerous to be so pleased when his head turned toward her, and to feel protected merely because he was within reach of her hand.

No, she told herself, he would not keep the promise he had made her. But she had nothing else to hold to.

When Orion's square shone clear overhead, she slept, her weary head hidden in its hair turned toward him. The cold of the desert night struck into his limbs. Carefully he drew off his jacket and laid it around her.

This slight girl had courage; she did not speak of the danger to herself in aiding him. And he felt that he had always been a coward.

The glare of sunrise lay upon the cracked stone walls of the Burj al Arab, and the sounds of pandemonium echoed within it, out to the tranquil blue of the sea. The Tower, once a citadel of the vanished Greeks, gave shelter to those who sought trade or loot in Alexandria.

At the well beside the Tower, Arabs were striking their pavilions, and leading out their slender nervous horses; a throng of black-tent Bedouins labored at loading strings of kneeling grunting camels. Over the uproar presided the man they called Drub-Devil.

With his red hair lifted by the wind, and the chin jutting from his florid face, he tongue-lashed the camel drivers in broken Arabic. "God! This hour is the hour for going upon the road-not for smoking pipes and milking goats."

William Eaton had the bulk of middle age, and the enthusiasm of a dreamer who wastes no time in reasoning. For all his scolding, he was happy as a child about to start a journey. He had spent his past years in the Mediterranean: and to Paul, who had not met him before, he seemed unlike any other officer-especially one with the rank of general.

"Elijah took the bread the ravens dropped," Eaton assured him, "and I have no mind to refuse a recruit who would join my force without pay." Curiously his blue eyes took stock of the tall boy. "Your appearance has indeed something miraculous about it. You understand that rations are problematical, while hardships are certain? Why do you wish to go with us?"

Paul, who had nerved himself against interrogation, warmed to the New Englander's good humor. "To help, sir, if I can to strike a blow that may free William Bainbridge and his crew."

"Hm! And it may not. How, Master Davies, did you find my encampment?"

"Through the kindness of Mademoiselle D'Aliermont."