The Tenth Gift (31 page)

“Good evening, Cat’rin.”

It was the raïs.

He held her gaze until she looked away, then offered something to her. “I thought you like this back.”

It was a small object, wrapped in a length of cotton. She unwrapped it, feeling as she did so the contours of the object within. She hardly dared hope, but then suddenly there it was, its calfskin a little scuffed and darkened, but otherwise undamaged.

She clasped it to her breast. “My book.”

“Is a little charred, I fear. Khadija try to burn it.”

“Khadija?”

“My cousin, the amina, she who prepare my female slaves for market. I am sure you have not forgotten her so soon. She has not forgotten you. Unfortunately, good djellaba I gave you did not fare so well.”

Now she remembered the amina, the small, imperiously beautiful woman who had stripped them bare and subjected the possible virgins among them to such indignities. Her cheeks flared. She gazed down at her feet. “I have not forgotten her.”

“She is, I think, jealous of my attentions to you.”

Incredulous, Cat stared at him. “Jealous? Jealous that you stole me from my home for sale like a common chattel? How could she ever be jealous of me, whom she treated like an animal? No, worse, for no animal is conscious of shame when its naked body is subjected to the scrutiny of strangers!”

He gave her a crooked smile. “I see that your experiences have not quenched the fire in you, Cat’rin Anne Tregenna.”

“They have not yet served to destroy me, no,” she returned, low-voiced. “So if that was what you sought, you have not succeeded. In fact, it seems I have been most fortunate, for my new master is a man of considerable sensibility. He has put me to work that I am enjoying greatly, and it has done much to restore to me some self-respect and hope in the world.”

“He must be a fine man, to have achieved so much in such little time.”

“I am sure he is. I have not yet had the pleasure of making his acquaintance.”

“Strange, he should spend so much good coin on you and not even introduce himself,” he mused.

Cat folded her arms and said nothing to this, though she had to admit she thought the same.

“I hope this good master not find you as dangerous as I have found you,” he went on.

“Dangerous?”

“They say God made mankind from clay; he make the djinn from fire. The djinn very dangerous, they have power to possess a man.” He pulled a strand of her red hair loose from the cotton wrap and ran it thoughtfully through his fingers. “Which are you, Cat’rin, a woman or a djinn?”

She took her hair back from him and stuffed it back inside the head scarf. “I am a flesh-and-blood woman,” she said sharply. “I think maybe that is most dangerous thing of all.” And with that he swept her a mocking bow, and took his leave.

W
E READ TOGETHER
, I
DRISS AND
I,
UNTIL THE SUN
started to come up. Its first rays came filtering through the shutters of the salon, making slices of black and white of everything it touched. Where the sunlight hit Idriss’s hand on the table, it rendered his skin a pale and radiant gold that was almost white. Mine, by contrast, lay in shadow, but the book was cut in two by it, one half glowing, the other hidden. I wanted to say something about this observation, for it seemed somehow significant, but I was too tired to frame the thought in words and instead a vast yawn took me in its viselike grip.

“Why did the raïs sell her to this merchant?” I said, mystified. “Or is he also Qasem? But then, why would he buy her, wasn’t she already his property? I don’t understand.”

“You need some sleep,” Idriss said firmly. “Here.” He picked the book up, closed it gently, and placed it in my hands. “When you have slept for two hours we will finish it together; then we will have breakfast, and later we will go to see Khaled.” He paused. “And at breakfast you may want to read these, too.”

There were three sheets of paper in his hand, rather crumpled-looking. I stared at them, not registering what they were. Frowning, I reached for them, but he stood up and held them out of my reach. “Not now,” he said.

I realized then with an unpleasant jolt what they were: the note and the photocopies Michael had left for me at the riad. I had folded them into the back of
The Needle-Woman’s Glorie
and forgotten all
about them. And about Michael. Oh God, what was I going to do about Michael and his determined pursuit? “Give them to me!” I cried.

He grinned. “Now I know something about your Catherine’s story that you do not yet know,” he said teasingly, and the sun in his eyes made them as enigmatic as a cat’s. “I had asked myself one question many times, and the doubt it raised made me wonder greatly whether or not your book was a forgery, for the question was: How, if it was brought on a slave ship that crossed the wide ocean to Salé, did it ever make its way back to England, and eventually into the hands of the extraordinary Miss Julia Lovat?”

“And now you know?”

“I have an idea … a theory. And I am more sure than ever that what you have here is a genuine artifact and not a fake.” “And you know that from the papers you have there?” “They suggest something … remarkable.” “I wish you would tell me.”

“I do not want to spoil the story for you.” He smiled. “Stories should be told in the right order and at the right time. Did you learn nothing from
One Thousand and One Nights?”

“This is not a fairy tale,” I said frostily, “and that is my property. What makes you think you have the right to withhold it from me?”

His eyebrows shot up. “If you are in such a bad temper now, how much worse will it be if you have no sleep? But do not worry, I will keep them safe for you.” And he calmly proceeded to fold the pages into quarters and stow them inside his shirt. “You see, I will sleep with them next to my heart. Besides, there is still a big piece of the puzzle missing, and in order to come by it, you—like your Catherine—will have to make a large decision, and large decisions should never be made on a lack of sleep.”

I yawned again, hugely. If I was not careful, my head would be joining the photocopies and I would be snoring away on Idriss’s chest. Would that be such a bad thing? my traitor brain whispered.
Yes, it would. I got up abruptly before I could say or do anything really stupid, and went upstairs. Alone.

It was only after I had crept into the little bed and laid my head down on the pillow that I remembered something Idriss had said.

The extraordinary Julia Lovat …

He thought I was extraordinary. And with that thought hovering like a protective cloud above me, I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

R
OB

November 1625

R
OBERT
B
OLITHO HAD ALWAYS CONSIDERED HIM
self a robust man, so it was with some detestation that he found himself weak as a mouse, heaving up a thin yellow bile day after endless day on this, his first sea passage.

“’Tis just seasickness, lad,” the first mate told him, laughing to see such an ox of a man reduced to his piteous state. “It’ll not kill thee.”

But that couldn’t be right, Rob thought. His blood was half brine, like that of any Cornishman. There must be some other, more sinister, cause.

By the end of the second week at sea with the vile nausea showing no sign of abating, he was more than ready to cast himself overboard to end the misery. Only the image of Catherine, bruised and beaten by barbarian slave masters, drove him grimly to survive each day. “She is suffering far worse than I,” he told himself time and again. “And if she can endure, then so can I.”

Then a day came when he managed to keep down a little stale bread and dried meat, and after that he improved moment upon moment until one morning he found himself out on deck with the sun on his face and the smell of the salt spray in his nostrils, and the waves spangled with light, and he thought he could be in no finer place in all the world. The wind had whipped the wave-tops into peaks and crests, the sails bellied smoothly, and the ship sped along like a great seabird. It had been a fair passage, the first mate told him—he was a lucky man. And then he regaled Rob with tales of
storms and broken masts and foundered vessels and the cries of drowning men till Rob felt quite queasy again. “And that’s to say nothing of the pirates,” the man went on, blithely unaware of the effect his reminiscences were having on his listener. “The waters are infested with ’em. It’s a rare vessel makes it through the Straits nowadays without some sea-devil out of Sallee or Argier on its tail. Mate of mine was taken by a renegadoe just off the Canaries and put to the galleys in the Med. The stories he had to tell would make your balls shrink.”

Rob really didn’t want to hear this, but the mariner had got him fair pinned to the gunwale.

“Chained naked to a bench, rowing twenty hours a day, he was, whipped till he was bloody. All they got to keep ’em going was a bit of bread soaked in wine when the officer went around, just to stop the poor wretches from fainting. A round dozen of them died, and then they flogged ’em just to make sure they was dead and not fakin’ it, and after that they chucked ’em in the drink. He survived three years of that; then he got bought by another master and put to work building some barracks or such outside of Argier. Not much changed, he said—still got flogged day and night, but at least he got to lie down from time to time on something that wasn’t pitchin’ and tossin’ on the brine. He saw some right fearful sights there. Men beaten on the soles of their feet—bastinadoe, they call it, the brutes—till they was black and bloody and never walked aright again. One who tried to escape, he was brought back and dragged behind horses around and around through thorns and rocks till he expired. Another was cut up into little pieces while he was still alive—an ear, a toe, a finger—one joint at a time, till he died screaming. For they hates and loathes Christendom, these Mahometans. Nothing pleases them better than to see a Christian suffer. Another poor bastard got away but killed one of his guards in the process. When they finally caught up with him, he’d have been better off making a fight of it and having them kill him then and there. Poor bugger, he was cast off the city walls till his body caught fast on one of the cruel spikes they had embedded
there for that very purpose, and there he hung, pierced through thigh and groin, unable to move up nor down, in agony, while crows picked at him and women came and threw stones at him and laughed when they drew blood.”

He paused to draw breath and was about to go on, when Rob said quickly, hoping to bring the subject to a close, “Truly, they sound a most savage people.”

“They are that. For the most part they are barbarous and intemperate, given to violent humors and monstrous appetites.”

Rob turned to find that another man had come to join their conversation and now leaned on the gunwale, cutting off any chance of escape he thought he had had. It was the man he had met briefly at the offices of Hardwicke & Buckle, but when this man and Killigrew had begun their more serious discussions, Rob had been ushered away into another room. Even in that short time, Rob had been left with an unfavorable impression of the man. He couldn’t put his finger on it, for the man was bluff and pleasant enough, but there was something calculating in his regard, even though he met your eye readily enough and professed to comradeship and warm fellow-feeling. His name was William Marshall, and Rob wondered if he was in some distant way related to Killigrew, for they shared the same narrow features and the same chill blue eyes. But Marshall was an older man than the other, although it might just have been that long exposure to sun and sea had hardened his flesh and burned lines into him that his compatriot lacked.

“You have traveled extensively among them, sir?” Rob asked, curious, and keen to draw the conversation along less lurid lines.

“I have made four or five visits to Barbary and swear each shall be my last,” the other said, tugging at a knot in his gray beard. “The climate is foul and the inhabitants fouler still. But there is money to be made there and I’d fain make my fortune sooner than later, and have some years left to enjoy it. Aye, even among the scum of Africa, as good Marlowe would have it.”

“Marlowe?”

Marshall exchanged a mocking glance with the mariner. “Can he really know nothing of Kit Marlowe, the finest playwright that ever graced our shores?”

The mariner shrugged. “The lad’s young,” he said fairly, “and Marlowe’s been dead and buried longer than he’s lived.”

Marshall sighed. “So much for immortality. Give me a pot of gold and the here and now, I say.” He turned back to Rob, an instructive light in his eye. “’The cruel pirates of Argier, that damned train, the scum of Africa’—he had the right of it, did Marlowe. You should make an effort to see one of his pieces when it comes around your way.” He struck a swashbuckling pose and declaimed in ringing tones:

And with a flourish he skewered Rob upon the point of his invisible blade. “Ah, ’twas a fair few seasons past I was on the stage,” he sighed. “Great times; fine times. Oh, how they cheered when Tamburlaine burned the Mahometans’ sacred book and danced upon its ashes!”

“We don’t have much call for seeing plays down in Cornwall,” Rob said stiffly. “And I’d hope we’d have more respect than to burn a sacred text, even if it were not our own.”

“Lord save me from ever being consigned to the provinces! No wonder John spends so much of his time up in town. If the women of Cornwall are as self-righteous as you, there can be nothing down there to keep him entertained.”

“I always heard Will Shakespeare was more favored than Kit Marlowe,” the mariner said, eager not to be shut out of the conversation.

Marshall pulled a face. “Old Shake-a-stick was as soft as butter, always conniving with whichever faction was in power, and wordy as the day is long. God, some of those monologues … I could never remember my bloody lines, always made my parts up as I went along and tried to get a laugh or two.”

“There was that there
Titus Andronicus
, though,” the mariner mused. “I enjoyed that mightily.”

“That was just him trying to catch the general temper of things. He never did it very well,” Marshall said disparagingly. “No, Kit had the right of it when it came to brutality. There’s no touching his Tamburlaine, or the Jew. Though I’ll give Tourneur his due, he had a proper feel for violence. And Kyd had his moments.”

“Aye, I loved that
Spanish Tragedy
of his,” said the mariner with relish. “But I went to see
The Renegadoe
last year and left after an hour, it were so dull.”

“That was Massinger, not Kyd.” Marshall chided him with all the world-weariness of the connoisseur.

Rob was beginning to feel ever more at sea, in all senses of the term. But he must try to get along with these new comrades, so, “I’ve heard there’s a Moor in
Othello.”

“Aye,” said the mariner cheerfully. “Black as soot, but he marries a white girl—stands to reason that’s against nature. He gets tricked into believing she’s made the two-backed beast with another man, so he strangles her.”

“But the poor lass,” cried Rob. “That hardly seems very fair!”

“Fair?” Marshall clapped him on the shoulder. “Life’s not fair, lad. Surely you’ve learned that much in your—what? Twenty years?”

“ Twenty-three,” Rob corrected.

“Aye, you’re young enough yet, but old enough, too, not to lose your head over a maid.”

Rob’s chin came up dangerously. “What do you mean?”

“John mentioned you have joined our expedition with a mad scheme to save some poor drab taken by the Sallee Rovers?”

“She’s no drab,” Rob said hotly.

Now the mariner was agog. “Tell on, lad,” he cried eagerly, “for that sounds like a story worth ten of these play-makers’ tales.”

Marshall watched Rob go red to the tips of his ears. “Go about your duties, man,” he told the sailor shortly. “This is a subject for the attention of gentlemen alone.”

The mariner cast him a knowing squint. “En’t nothing refined about the doings of men and women—
that
much I know. Women are bitches in heat for all their silks and satins, and men but dogs with their pricks up, and there’s an end to it. But if my presence makes ye feel less like
gentlemen
, I’ll leave ye to it.”

Marshall watched the man retreat; then he leaned in toward Rob. “I’d give it up, lad, if you’ve any sense. These Turks have rampant appetites, especially where there’s sweet white meat to be had, and they’ll take a boy as hungrily as a girl. The wench’ll be long ruined, and then where’s the point in a gallant gesture? Come along for the ride, that’s fair enough, and if we get lucky and catch a Spanish prize on the way home, you’ll be entitled to your share of the spoils. We sail under the King’s letter of marque—it’ll even be legal. Then you can buy yourself no end of fine fillies and go home a hero.”

“She’s my fiancé e,” Rob said steadily, gritting his teeth with the effort not to smash the man’s nose flat. “I’ve sworn to bring her back or die in the attempt.”

Marshall shrugged. “That’s the more likely outcome of the two.”

“You will take me with you as Sir John agreed?”

“John has his own reasons as usual, no doubt, in consigning you to me. You can tag along, but don’t expect me to risk my neck for you. It’ll be hazardous enough without having to nursemaid a simpleton.”

Rob frowned. “If you’re trading with these people, can’t we just sail in to their port?”

The older man smiled, but the expression didn’t touch his eyes. “Nay, lad, far too risky. There are too many factions involved, all at each other’s throats, and a fine British vessel bearing a valuable cargo is a great temptation to every one of them. Since Mansell’s stupid
bloody assault on Argier, any British ship in these waters is fair game. John Harrison had to put in as far away as Tetouan when he came on his mission earlier this summer and walked five hundred miles across rough country disguised as a Mahometan pilgrim, crazy bastard!”

Rob had no idea who either Mansell or Harrison were, but he nodded as if such things were public knowledge. “He made it, then, Harrison?”

“Oh, aye. He always does. Neck of the Devil, that man. Went with the King’s blessing to try to trade free some of the thousand or so English captives held in Sallee, came away, though, with nary a one.”

Rob regarded him with horror. “A thousand prisoners?”

Marshall looked at him askance. “The Turks have been stealing the poor bastards off merchant ships and fishing vessels for years and no one’s done a damn thing about it. Not enough money in the treasury to pay for a decent navy after King James’s extravagances, and his son’s no better with the purse strings, and of course now we’re at war with Spain again and there’s bigger fish to fry. Harrison’s a bit of a lone adventurer, in it for the glory, though I dare say he’s making a pretty penny on the side with bribes and ‘fees’ and whatnot. But war always opens up opportunities for the canny, that’s what I always say.” And he winked, then took himself off to the galley for a sup, as he put it.

That night Rob tossed and turned. If the King’s agent had been unable to bring the captives away, what chance did he have? It sounded as if he were about to set foot into one of the inner circles of Hell, populated by a legion of monsters and fiends. The prospect frightened him: It was so far removed from his own life at Kenegie, where the worst you were like to encounter was some poor desperate sheep-thief trying to make off with one of the flock or some traveling mountebank trying to con you out of your wages down at the Dolphin. He had never even learned to wield a sword, though he’d brought one with him—such a skill was rarely called for in rural
Cornwall. He could, though, he told himself fiercely, defend himself well enough with fists or a cudgel. And perhaps this man Marshall— who seemed both wily and experienced—might help him to succeed where others had failed. From the little pouch he wore about his neck, Rob took out his grandmother’s ring, the one Cat had pressed back into his hand with the instruction to give it to her again at a better time. And what better time might there be than when he had saved her from the pirates? An eternal optimist, Rob closed his hand around the ring and made himself fall asleep on that thought.