Captive (49 page)

Alex looked down. There was nothing else she could say—and nothing she could do.

Jebal turned and left the room. Alex glanced up just as she heard the heavy metal bolt slamming down outside of her door. She wiped her eyes, which were tearing again. She was only flesh and blood too. How stupid she had been to cast herself in the role of a heroine. She wasn’t brave and she wasn’t strong, not anymore.

And without the lamp, she could not escape Tripoli and Jebal.

But dear God, she had finally recognized that it was time to give up and go home.

Jebal changed his mind. Zoe
was
a liar, and she might very well be a thief. If she had Zohara’s personal belongings from her Christian life. Jebal would be very interested in examining them. As if it might give him some insight into the woman he had fallen so deeply in love with—and now hated so completely.

As he strode through the women’s quarters, he thought about how ironic it was. He had married two very beautiful and very different women, but they both had one thing in common—they were both utter, self-serving liars. Zoe had ceased to please him long ago. Her failure to give him a son and heir had not helped. But he was still, foolishly, bitterly disappointed about Zohara.

He was in an exceedingly bad mood, as he had been ever since discovering Zohara’s treachery and infidelity, and Blackwell’s escape had only heightened it. He was almost capable of barging into Zoe’s bedchamber without knocking, but he managed to restrain himself at the last moment. His fist lifted. About to bang on the door, he ignored her slave, Masa, whose eyes bulged. Jebal did not care why.

And then he heard them.

The woman’s soft cries, the man’s savage, sexual growl.

Instead of knocking, in a state of absolute disbelief, stunned to the point of mindlessness, Jebal opened the door.

And saw his wife lying naked with her legs spread wide on the marble floor. A man knelt above her, his knees by her shoulders—his cock ramming down her throat.

Jebal saw red. But not before he had regained a modicum of thought and realized that the man was Rais Jovar.

“I don’t understand,” Alex cried.

The two soldiers who had demanded she come with them did not reply.

They were striding briskly through the eerily deserted palace that next morning, at dawn. Alex began to shiver. The moment was horribly reminiscent of the other day when Jebal had dragged her to the town square to witness Blackwell’s execution. Had he been recaptured? Alex began to sweat even though it was still comfortably cool out in the final moments before sunrise.

“Please tell me what is happening,” she begged her guards, stumbling to keep up with the rapid pace they set.

One of them glanced askance at her. “Lilli Zohara, we are under orders not to converse with you. I am so sorry.”

Alex plucked his vest. “Have they recaptured Blackwell?”

The man set his face in a stony expression and did not reply.

And then Alex heard the hissing, the shouting, the jeers.

Her heart plummeted to her feet. Ohmygod! They were not far from the public square, and clearly a bloodthirsty crowd had gathered there.
Please, not Xavier!
she begged silently.

She and her escort turned the corner. The narrow dirt street had a slight slope to it. At the bottom was the square. Alex’s heart sank even further. She could see that the square was filled to overflowing with excited spectators—just as it had been the day Blackwell had almost been executed. She strained to see as they hurried toward the piazza.

The bashaw sat his snowy white mount in the center of the square, just to the right of the stained execution block, exactly as he had the other morning. The tall, burly executioner stood there in his flowing black robes, loosely holding his huge scimitar. The long, thick, curving blade glinted in the Mediterranean light. And four heavily armed soldiers kept a prisoner in their midst, a prisoner whose build and features were obscured by the men surrounding him.

She was sweating. Shaking. Violently afraid.

She could not live through this nightmare again.

They reached the crowd and Alex could no longer see. The soldiers shouted at the gawking people, who had to be shoved
aside to make way for them. Alex finally glimpsed Jebal. His face was frozen, and this time he was mounted on a bejeweled black Arabian gelding that danced nervously beside the bashaw’s stallion.

Her guards pushed her through the last row of spectators. Alex gasped as the prisoner in the center of the square became visible. Standing amongst the four armed janissaries, his wrists manacled behind his back, was the blond Scot renegade, the admiral of the bashaw’s navy, Rais Jovar.

Alex did not understand.

Was Jovar a spy?

And then she was propelled forward, toward Jebal. He met her gaze briefly, looked away. The guards halted with Alex. She stood a half dozen feet from her Moslem husband.

The bashaw’s stallion pranced. “Where is she?” he demanded of Jebal.

Alex jerked, turning her wild eyes on Jebal, wondering what horror awaited her now.

But Jebal’s frozen eyes moved slightly. Alex realized he was looking past her, and she turned to follow the direction of his gaze. She gasped.

Zoe was shoved rudely forward by two soldiers, so roughly that she landed on her hands and knees in the dirt in front of Jebal’s gelding. She was naked.

Alex’s pulse pounded wildly. Her gaze lifted, and confused, she met Jebal’s regard.

His cold eyes pierced hers before he turned away.

Zoe stood, her lush body streaked with dirt and grime, her hair matted and disheveled, flowing to her hips. One side of her face was black and blue. There were bruises on her torso, her buttocks. She had been beaten, maybe whipped. Alex was sick.

“My lord, I beg you, forgive me! I knew not what I was doing! It will never happen again, please Allah, have mercy on my body and my soul!”

“Silence!” Jebal shouted. He bent and struck her with a riding whip, so harshly that Zoe screamed and fell to the ground, where she lay unmoving.

Alex’s instinct was to rush to her and help her. Instead, shaking now, she restrained herself. For she understood now, with utter clarity, what had happened. She was horrified.

The bashaw signaled the executioner.

Alex froze as Jovar was propelled to the block and pushed to his knees. His head was forced down. He was utterly pale beneath his sunburn, but he did not weep or beg. In fact, there was something strangely savage in his eyes—as if he had always known he would die a brutal death. Alex closed her eyes as the executioner lifted the scimitar. She heard a thump and the crowd’s triumphant roar.

Alex refused to open her eyes, panting and ill, enough so that she did not think she could prevent herself from vomiting, even though she hadn’t been able to eat in three entire days.

“Zohara!”

Alex jerked, facing Jebal.

His smile was twisted. “Jovar betrayed me with my wife. His fate would have been Blackwell’s had he not escaped. Look.”

Alex panted. “Please. I cannot.”

“Look!”

Her eyes filling with tears, which thankfully blurred her vision, Alex had no choice but to look at the decapitated man. Instantly she fell to her knees, her insides heaving, throwing up water and bile.

Jebal spat out a command.

Zoe screamed.

Alex jerked, her attention helplessly drawn to Zoe—who was being tied up hand and foot. “No,” Alex whispered, horrified.

Tears streamed down Zoe’s face. “Jebal, please. I beg your forgiveness, have mercy, dearest Allah the Great, help me, please, I love you, I am loyal to you, please, don’t do this!” She screamed hysterically. “Allah, my Lord, my savior, Allah the Great, spare me!”

Two soldiers appeared with a sack.

Alex was immobilized.

Zoe began to struggle, but the two guards easily lifted her and threw her into the huge burlap bag. The soldiers holding it tied the top closed with cords. The sides of the burlap rippled and bulged as Zoe tried uselessly to free herself, her screams, although muffled, shrill enough for all to hear.

This could not be happening, Alex managed to think.

Jebal rode forward. He gripped the top end of the sack and
continued to ride toward the harbor, dragging his burden behind him. Zoe’s screams grew, as did her gruesome gyrations.

Alex leaned heavily on her nearest guard, unable to believe the monstrous spectacle she was witnessing.

At the edge of the wharf, very calmly, Jebal threw the sack containing his wife into the sea.

Again the crowd roared with approval.

For the second time in her life, Alex fainted.

Malla

July 16

T
HEY SHOOK HANDS
.

Xavier was on board Preble’s flagship, the forty-four gun USS
Constitution.
The Danish merchantman he had escaped Tripoli upon had rendezvoused with a French brig at Alexandria, and Xavier had arranged transport to Malta, where Preble was currently at anchor. The two men’s gazes held. And then Preble smiled and reached forward, embracing Xavier warmly.

Xavier pounded his back. They had served together in the recent French war, before Xavier had resigned his commission. “My God, I wasn’t sure I would ever see this day,” Xavier said with a sigh. He was acutely aware of being free—and as acutely aware that Alexandra remained in captivity.

“Nor I. I have been distraught, first upon learning of the capture of the
Pearl,
then upon learning of your disappearance. The entire world has thought you dead this past year, Xavier.” Preble’s dark, intelligent eyes were piercing and curious.

“It is a very long story.”

“Tonight then, over a good meal and a bottle of port,” Preble said decisively. He paced the confines of his small cabin and paused by his desk. “I am indebted to you. I received
your letter. How timely it was. Unfortunately I cannot say more.”

“Not even knowing I came to Barbary secretly commissioned by President Jefferson?” Xavier asked.

“Accept a commission from me,” Preble said abruptly. “I need more men like you. You can resign whenever you please.”

Xavier had not a doubt that war was in the air. Upon arriving at Malta he had remarked the fact that half of the United States squadron was present. But he had also counted six gunboats, each capable of carrying thirty-five men and armed with twenty-four-pounders, and two bomb vessels sporting thirteen-inch brass mortars. Gunboats and bomb vessels were vital to the kind of operation that any intelligent commander would launch against Tripoli, and were not usually in tow. Their presence at Malta was highly significant.

“Perhaps I can help you,” Xavier said, pacing himself now. He turned and stared out of the porthole at the night-darkened sea. He was facing south. He was facing Tripoli. There was an aching in the vicinity of his chest—he could not shake himself free of a deep sense of loss, a vast regret. And he was so worried about her. “Perhaps we can help one another,” Xavier said slowly.

“Go on.” Preble was as cautious.

Xavier faced his old friend. “I might consider a temporary commission—just for the duration of the action at hand. But I also wish to launch an operation of my own.”

Preble’s brows drew together. “I do not understand.”

“There is a woman being held against her will in Tripoli. An American. I wish to rescue her.”

Preble stared.

She had lost track of the time. Many days had passed since Xavier’s escape. She thought about him constantly. She still believed that he would return to rescue her, yet she was so worried—so terrified. Rescue seemed to be an impossibility.

She’d had no word from Murad, either, whom she missed terribly. She prayed for his welfare, assumed he had fled Tripoli, where he had no future now—because of her.

Alex had no contact with the outside world. Her guards were under strict orders not to converse with her. She was not
allowed any visitors, and even Paulina did not dare violate Jebal’s command. Not after what had happened to Zoe.

Alex tried very hard not to think about the other woman’s horrible death. During the day she managed to block it out. At night she had nightmares—and eventually the woman in the sack became herself.

How lonely she was, how frightened. If Xavier failed to rescue her, her own fate was quite clear.

Then, overnight, Alex sensed a change in the ambience of the palace. A silence, a tension, so heavy it was ripe, pervaded the corridors beyond her tiny, enclosed, self-contained world. Something was happening, but Alex could not fathom what.

The slave who brought her her daily rations was mute, which was no coincidence, but that morning Alex used the opportunity to question her guards. “Why do I have the distinct feeling that something is wrong?” she asked them.

They ignored her.

Her door was wide open, the mute slave was setting her table. Staring out into the hallway, Alex strained to hear. All day long, the gardens outside of her shuttered windows had been silent, when usually they were filled with happily conversing women. Only the howling wind could be heard, a wind that had kicked up overnight. “Has something happened? Has someone died? Why are the gardens so quiet?” Alex begged. “Where is everyone?!”

She did not really expect an answer.

One of the Turks faced her, startling her. “Seven American ships have anchored outside of the harbor—with gunboats and bomb vessels. Clearly they intend to attack. The bashaw has been readying Tripoli’s defenses since they were spotted last night.”

Alex turned white. In all of her wildest imaginings, she had never dreamed that she might be inside the palace when Preble attacked. “When? When will he attack?” Was it possible? Was it already early August? How had the days turned into weeks?

“No one knows. When the wind changes. A northeaster has been blowing since the ships arrived.”

A northeaster, a gale. Alex returned to her room, her pulse racing. She found herself at her window, staring through the latticework of the shutters, which were nailed shut. She could
just glimpse the sea, a collage of frothing whitecaps. The palm trees in the garden swayed in the raging wind. But she could not, of course, see Preble’s squadron. Although the palace was perched on the northern side of the neck of land facing the Mediterranean, her windows overlooked the sea east of the harbor, facing Alexandria.