Lost Love Found (37 page)

He threw a three and glowered furiously. The earl barely attempted to hide his glee as he took the dice, but his triumph was short-lived. He threw a two.

Murrough allowed his brother no time to gloat. Neither would he allow the earl any time for regrets. “It is settled,” he said bluntly. “Tom, I know you have had some experience with ships, having sailed with Her Majesty’s privateers in your youth. And you certainly have the experience of command, having been with Essex at Cádiz and in Ireland. I shall have no fears for
Archangel
knowing that she is in your hands.”

“Should Valentina not remain behind with Temur Khan about?” the earl inquired hopefully.

“Valentina will be disguised as a young man.” Murrough chuckled. “There is, I am assured by Arslan Bey, no danger involved.”

“
Valentina, a boy?
Impossible!” the earl said. “She is the most perfect woman I know. You could hide her hair, and put her in pants, but how the hell are you going to disguise her … ah, her … her bosom damn it! Her chest will surely give her away, Murrough.”

“There are ways, Tom”—Murrough chuckled—“of even hiding such bounteous charms as my cousin possesses. Wait and see.”

Although Lord Burke said nothing, his look was as skeptical as was the earl’s. It disturbed him that Valentina could be exposed to danger, even death.

“How long will you be away from me, divinity?” Tom Ashburne asked Valentina that evening as they strolled the deck. “I think fate a most unkind bitch to have given the toss of the dice to Padraic.” His arm stole about her waist.

“Perhaps ten days or more,” Valentina said. “Murrough tells me it is several days’ ride from Kaffa to the Tatar encampment.” She removed his arm, for she was in no mood for romance now.

“Damn it, Val, I shall not see you for a good two weeks! Will you not let me press my suit tonight?”

She gave him a stony look, and he said, “Will you at least kiss me before you go?”

Valentina laughed softly. “Your singlemindedness does you credit, my lord. Very well. One kiss, but no more. I will not have my brain befuddled by passion at a time when I need my wits about me.”

“You are so practical, divinity, and yet I have known you to be otherwise,” he teased her.

“The art of practicality is something I learned at my mother’s knee, sir, and if I am in doubt as to my paternal parentage, I have no doubts as to my mater,” she teased him back. Then with a small smile, she raised her face to his, and he kissed her.

It was a tender kiss, for he had been warned and did not wish to get into her bad books. “You are becoming a hard woman,” he complained, reluctantly drawing his mouth away.

“Only sensible, my lord. I must be, and so should you. I did not invite either you or Padraic along on this journey, Tom. ’Twas each of you who invited yourself. Until I have unriddled this riddle, I shall not be satisfied.”

“I do not know how you can unriddle it, Valentina,” he replied. “Unless you are the mirror image of either the prince or the late sultan, I do not know how you can be certain either of those men fathered you. I think your family mad to have allowed you this journey!”

“My lord, it is obvious that you do not understand me at all,” said Valentina, “and so I shall bid you good night.”

She left him, and he stood at the rail, looking up at the star-brilliant sky. He loved her. He did not understand why Lord and Lady Bliss had not simply accepted either him or Lord Burke as a son-in-law and pushed Valentina to the altar once her mourning was up. She should be married now and preparing for her children, not traveling about the world in a futile pursuit to a question that could probably never be answered! He loved her. He adored her, and the truth of her paternal heritage meant nothing to him. He wanted her for his wife, yet he absolutely did not understand her.

In the late hours of the night, while the Earl of Kempe tossed restlessly, four muffled figures departed from the ship and disappeared into the darkness of the city. They moved swiftly through the deserted streets in total silence until at last their leader brought them to a wall with a small locked door, which he unlocked and locked again behind them. They continued down a flight of steps into a well-lit tunnel.

“My friend!” the governor welcomed Murrough as they exited the tunnel into a small, windowless room.

The two men clasped hands in greeting, then Murrough said, “My lord governor, may I present my younger brother, Lord Padraic Burke, and my cousin, Lady Valentina Barrows. You may speak directly to my cousin, my lord governor, for she understands your tongue.”

The governor and Lord Burke clasped hands, and then Arslan Bey salaamed to Valentina. “As you are such a handsome gentleman, my lady, I can but imagine what a beautiful woman you must be. I hesitate to allow you to depart on such a journey as you are proposing to make. Is it really necessary for you to speak with Borte Khatun now? Can you not wait until she returns to Kaffa in the autumn?”

Valentina smiled at the governor, and he suddenly realized that she was, indeed, a beautiful woman. “You are most kind, my lord, to distress yourself so about my safety, but I must seek out Borte Khatun as soon as possible. I am expected back in Istanbul by the end of May for an audience with the Sultan Valide. It would not do, I am told, to offend that lady. I am certain that I shall be safe traveling with my cousins and your men.”

Arslan Bey shook his head ruefully. “There is no arguing with a determined woman, and I should know it. I have three wives and seven daughters, all of whom have a strong streak of stubbornness. Go if you must, lady, and Allah be with you, for you will surely need his protection if you come to the attention of Temur Khan.” The govenor turned again to Murrough. “She is, indeed, tall for a woman,” he said, “but her height may help to disguise her.” He eyed Valentina critically. “If I did not know better, I should be convinced she was a pretty young man. One thing, however, if I may.” He signaled to his servant, who came forward with a little tray. Arslan Bey lifted a counterfeit mustache from the tray. “I think, if you will wear this, my lady, your disguise will be perfect. Baba will affix it for you, showing you how, and he will supply you with a tiny pot of glue to carry along with you so that you may repair your mustache daily.”

The mute slave led Valentina to a mirror, then carefully showed her precisely how to place the mustache below her nose, above her upper lip. It was a small mustache, dark, with little pointed ends. The transformation was miraculous. The pretty young man disappeared, and Valentina became a very handsome male. Even she was astounded as she gazed wide-eyed into the mirror.

“I do not,” she decided, “look like any of my brothers.”

“None of your brothers has a mustache,” Padraic noted, and ducked the friendly blow she aimed at him.

The governor smiled at them. He found Lady Barrows’s easy way with the gentlemen encouraging. She did not behave like any woman he knew or that Temur Khan would know. There was nothing meek or helpless about her to attract Temur Khan’s suspicions. “I do not suppose,” he ventured, “That you are adept with any weapon, my lady?” It was a ridiculous question, of course, but he was curious about her.

“I am competent with both sword and dagger, my lord governor,” she answered him. “My father did not believe a woman should be defenseless.”

“Astounding!” The words were out of Arslan Bey’s mouth before he realized it.

Valentina laughed. “The differences in our cultures are indeed astounding, my lord, as much so to me as to you,” she told him. “Yet, despite our differences, the world continues to spin through the heavens as it has done since the beginning of time. I think the Diety we all worship—the one you call Allah, the Jews, Yahweh, and we Christians, God—must possess a great sense of humor.”

The governor began to chuckle, and the chuckle grew into a chortle of laughter. Finally he said, “Wisdom in one so young, my lady, is a great gift. I can but envy the man you will one day marry.”

When Ali Pasha, the governor’s captain, had been summoned, the governor introduced him to the English visitors. “This is my old friend, Captain O’Flaherty, his brother, Lord Burke, and their cousin, the gracious Lady Barrows. They will travel with you, as I have already explained to you, to the camp of the Geray Tatars and then return with you to Kaffa.” Ali Pasha greeted the gentlemen and bowed, his brown eyes twinkling, to the mustached Valentina. “This lady,” the governor continued, “stands very high in the favor of the Sultan Valide. Protect her life at all costs.”

“As Allah wills it, my lord,” Ali Pasha replied, striking his chest with a fist and his forearm as he bowed to his master.

Standing in his palace courtyard, the governor watched them go, six figures identically garbed in dark blue baggy pants, long-sleeved white shirts, dark blue silk vests embroidered with red and silver threads, long, dark capes, which spread over the flanks of their horses, dark boots that reached their calves, and small turbans. They departed at a trot, looking no different from any other party of messengers traveling from his palace. The men-at-arms on the palace walls did not even bother to look down at them. Arslan Bey sighed with relief.

They moved off to the north and west of the city, Ali Pasha leading them, Murrough at his side. Valentina and Padraic rode in the middle, and the rear was brought up by the captain’s two men. To the southeast there were several parallel ranges of mountains. They traveled away from the mountains, heading toward the flat plains of the steppes.

The coastal area of the Crimea was lovely and fertile. The road wound between flowering orchards of cherry, peach, apricot, apple, and pear. There were fields of wheat and barley, the new growth laying a carpet of green across the landscape. There were vineyards just beginning to exhibit life and meadows in which cattle grazed in the spring sunshine and lambs played exuberantly near their more placid mothers. The English riders would have enjoyed it more if they had ridden at a more leisurely pace, but they rode hard. They were the governor’s weekly couriers to the Great Khan, and they rode with their usual strong sense of mission.

They stopped at a small caravanserai just before dusk. By good fortune, they were the innkeeper’s only guests. Murrough had carefully instructed his cousin that a Moslem man squatted when he made water and relieved himself, his back modestly to others of like intent. Positioning herself in a corner her two cousins shielding her as she obeyed nature’s call, Valentina wished she were anywhere but where she was. Murrough looked very solemn, his eyes carefully averted from her as he attended to his own business, but Padraic caught her gaze in his and, insufferable beast that he was, grinned at her when her face grew pink with embarrassment.

Their supper was a rich, spicy lamb stew, filled with small onions and chunks of tender meat. There were no utensils. They ate with the three fingers of their left hand, dipping their hands into the hot stew from a communal pot or using wedges of flat pita bread to scoop up portions. They drank water from a nearby stream to ease their thirst, for the innkeeper was a devout man and served no wine.

They slept on the floor before the fireplace, wrapped in their heavy cloaks. Before dawn they arose and ate a thick wheat porridge sweetened with honey before starting off again. At dawn they stopped for prayers, unrolling the prayer rugs slung across the rear of their saddles, kneeling on them, and bowing toward the holy city of Mecca. Anyone spying on the governor’s couriers would observe nothing unusual.

At noon they stopped to rest their horses while they attended to nature’s call and then ate a lunch of bread and goat’s cheese. They had reached the edge of the steppes. The great plain stretched out endlessly before them, fuzzed in a spring green of new growth. A wind still edged with winter blew at them from the north despite the bright spring sun. Mounted once more, they set off, traveling at a smooth and steady pace across the vast openness until the glorious sunset faded away into a smudge of charcoal red against the night sky. Here they would find no caravanserais, and when they finally stopped in the shelter of some lone rocks, they built a campfire, filled a small open kettle with water from their goat skin canteens, and tossed in several handsful of dried grain, boiling up a wheaten cereal very much like the one they had eaten that morning. There was no honey to sweeten it, but a pinch of salt made the glutinous mess more palatable.

“How much longer to the Geray Tatars?” Valentina asked Ali Pasha.

“Perhaps by tomorrow night, my lady, or perhaps early the following day. It depends on how quickly we move tomorrow.”

“There is a moon tonight,” she replied. “Could we not ride for a few more hours?”

“I admire your spirit, my lady,” Ali Pasha said, “but here on the steppes a party traveling at night is usually a party of raiders. They are liable to be attacked by others who cannot identify them in the dark as friend or foe. If you are anxious, however, to reach our destination, then you will not mind if we leave an hour or two before dawn.”

“Aye, let us, for I am, indeed, anxious to reach the Geray Tatars,” she said. Murrough and Padraic agreed.

They slept before their campfire that was kept burning throughout the night to ward off animals. Each of the five men took a turn at watch, dividing the night into two-hour segments, so that all might have a decent sleep. Long before dawn, even as the moon was setting, they started off once again, fortified by cold chunks of the wheaten cereal and boiling tea sweetened with a small loaf of sugar and sipped from a communal mug.

The day dawned overcast. By noon, a driving rain was falling, mixed with sleet and large, wet flakes of snow. Shivering, Valentina hunched down into her cloak as did her silent companions, chilled to the bone. The icy dampness seeped through their clothing. It didn’t help that all Valentina could think of was a large, hot tub of fragrant water.

Murrough fell back a moment and, riding next to her, said, “Ali Pasha says that if you need to stop, we will, but if we are to reach the Geray Tatars by evening we must push on. Unfortunately, this rain has slowed us.”