Scandal's Daughter (28 page)

Cordelia nursed him faithfully, leaving only when he snatched a little sleep, and for her meals. Over these, she reported, she studied Portuguese with Captain de Castilho, who spoke some English and Italian. Between bouts of nausea, James wondered at the evident delight she took in learning. She would come in her face bright with pleasure at the discovery of some similarity or intriguing contrast between Portuguese and Italian. To him the study of languages was a means to an end, but she obviously enjoyed it for its own sake.

What luck to have found her! he thought as she wiped his brow and tried to distract him from his sufferings with the Portuguese word for handkerchief. If he survived, he had to persuade her to marry him.

The
Flor do Campo
floundered on, past Malta, through the Strait of Sicily, between the southern end of Sardinia and the North African coast. Eventually James’s stomach grew used to the motion. As he recovered, he and Cordelia spent a good deal of time on deck for it was stuffy in the cabins—and she refused to enter his now that he was well.

At these latitudes the sun was fierce even so early in the year. The captain had a canvas awning rigged for them at the stern, behind the poop deck structure, out of the way of the business of the ship. In its shade they were invisible from anyone not seeking them out. James decided to take advantage of their privacy.

Cordelia sat on a cushion, earnestly pencilling in a new addition to her list of Portuguese words and their English equivalents. “Do you recall whether Captain de Castilho said it has an accent?” she asked.

“Let me look. If I see it I may remember.” James moved to a cushion close beside her and leaned still closer, his breath stirring the blond tendrils at her temple.

She edged away, moving back right into the curve of the arm he had carefully arranged behind her. She fitted very nicely.

“Is that the word?” he asked softly, pointing at the last in the list so that if she moved forward her breast would encounter his hand.

“Y-yes,” she said in an unsteady voice. “I...”

“
Palmeira
,” he read. “Palm tree. Easy enough. `And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.’“

“What...?” She turned her head.

He kissed her, his arms closing about her. Her mouth was soft and sweet, responsive—momentarily.

“What’s that?” She jerked away. “Listen!”

James had been distantly aware for some time of more shouts from crew to captain and back than usual. Since he did not understand, he took no notice. But now a new urgency had entered their voices.

The prow of a ship slid past, slowing, parallel to the
Flor do Campo
and no more than five yards distant. As the deck of the brigantine came into view, black-whiskered men in turbans poured yelling from hatchways, brandishing daggers, scimitars, and pikes. Some whirled long chains about their heads and let fly grappling hooks to thud into the merchantman’s planks.

Clasping Cordelia close, James uttered one terrifying word. “Corsairs!”

Chapter 25

Inexorably the two ships drew together. When their rails were a yard apart, the whooping corsairs swarmed aboard the merchantman. There was no resistance.

“What will they do?” whispered Cordelia, cold despite the southern sun.

“I don’t know,” James said soberly, standing up and giving her a hand. “The British have a treaty with the Dey of Algiers, but he disregards it when it suits him.”

“Let us hope it does not suit him at present!” She tried to smile. “At least Major Saunderson gave you a British passport.”

Two fearsome black-robed pirates, scimitars in hand and pistols in their belts, came round the corner to their little shelter. Two others with pikes appeared from the opposite direction.

“Go! Go!” bawled one of the pike-men in Turkish, jabbing at them with his weapon.

“You don’t need to shout,” Cordelia reproved him without flinching. A little British dignity could not come amiss, she felt. “We will go. Do stop waving that nasty thing about.”

Dumfounded, the man gaped at her. “She’s Turkish,” he blurted out.

“No, we are English, and the English have a treaty with your ruler. You will be sorry if you treat us with discourtesy.”

“Allahu aalam! Please, Bayan, our captain wishes to see you.”

Cordelia nodded graciously. The scimitar-wielders parted before her as she led the way forward. She glanced back at James. His eyes were warm with laughter and admiration.

The Portuguese crew huddled under guard amidships. Captain de Castilho rose as his passengers appeared. Spreading his hands in helpless apology, he said, “It would have been useless to fight them. We are traders, not military men.”

“We don’t hold you to blame, Captain,” Cordelia assured him.

“Don’t we?” James muttered disgustedly in English.

“Bayan?”

Turning, she found herself face to face with a huge, hook-nosed corsair. His thumbs in his girdle, he looked her up and down.

“I am told you speak Turkish, Bayan.”

“Yes.” Though she refused to be intimidated, she tucked her hand into the crook of James’s arm. “I lived in Istanbul for some years, but I and my brother are English. You have a treaty with the English. You had better let us go.”

“I regret, Bayan, but if you are truly English—”

“We are English! We will show you our papers.”

He waved this offer aside. “I do not read your alphabet. In any case, it is for Haji Ali Dey to decide. Besides, you cannot leave without a ship, and Reis Hammida would have me bastinadoed did I lose an unarmed Portuguese vessel. I must take you to Algiers.”

“But the
Flor do Campo
carries wheat, not treasure.”

The pirate laughed, white teeth flashing in the midst of his black beard. “The ship itself is of value, for we have little wood in our land suitable for ship-building. More important, there is always a need for infidel slaves. And if the Dey is not minded to please the English at present, a young, fair virgin will fetch a fine price.”

In the circumstances, Cordelia was more than ready to claim she was no virgin. However, before she could speak, the corsair captain turned away to give orders to his men.

The merchantman’s crew were to be deprived of their clothes and locked up below deck while a small crew of corsairs in Portuguese dress sailed her to Algiers. Cordelia, James, and Captain Castilho were confined all together in the latter’s cabin, next to theirs beneath the poop deck, to make it easier to guard them.

“Not that they will need to set a guard,” James said grimly, scanning the comfortably furnished cabin. Its two windows, one opening forward onto the main deck amidships, the other to starboard onto the narrow gangway to the stern, were built small to withstand crashing waves in a storm. “Even if we escaped from here, there is nowhere to go and two of us unarmed cannot overcome a dozen armed pirates.”

“Three,” said Cordelia, then glanced at the captain, seated at his table sunk in hopeless gloom, his head in his hands. “Two. You followed what that man said about the crew? You did not look as if you understood.”

“It might come in useful if they didn’t realize I know Turkish, but yes, I understood most of it.”

“About...about me?” Her gaze fixed on a brass barometer on the wall, she willed herself not to blush.

“About fair virgins, yes.” His voice was studiedly casual.

“Do you think...do you think I should tell them I’m not?”

“It might make things worse. I don’t know much about the Barbary corsairs.”

“Will you ask the captain? While I pretend not to listen?”

“You are the one who speaks Italian and is learning Portuguese,” James pointed out.

She glared at him. “I cannot ask him that! Perhaps he will understand if you ask in English. Or try Latin—he is a Roman Catholic, after all, so he must know some, and Papists are always talking about the Virgin Mary.”

“I’ll try,” he said, the corners of his lips twitching. He had a truly abominable sense of humour!

Cordelia stalked the two paces to the open starboard window and peered out at the narrow strip of deck and the dark blue sea beyond. Doing her best not to hear the garbled mishmash of English, Latin, Italian, and Portuguese behind her, she concentrated on possible ways to escape. She might be able to squeeze through the window; conceivably, if the key had been left in the outside of the lock, she might be able to open the cabin’s door for the men; but there would still be the corsairs to deal with.

“Better remain a virgin—for the present,” James interrupted her thoughts. “As far as I can make out, de Castilho says you would be sold into a harem anyway but not treated so well.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped and she sat down opposite the captain. “What about you?”

“I doubt any harem would want me,” he said dryly. “You know very well I’m not really a eunuch.”

She frowned at him. The captain was looking from one to the other as they spoke. Cordelia addressed him in a mixture of languages and passed on to James what she gathered in reply.

“If the Dey does not release us because we are English, he will ask for ransom. But until the ransom is paid, you will be treated as a slave. That means labouring in chains in the quarry or on the breakwater in the harbour. He says the breakwater at Algiers has been under construction for centuries because the winter storms destroy it as fast as it is built. Hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves have died... James, we must escape!”

He reached across the table to take her hand. “We shall,” he said gaily. “We have had plenty of practice, after all. Just give me time to think.” But his eyes were sombre.

They were given all the time in the world to think. No one came near them the rest of that day. Captain de Castilho relapsed into silent gloom, rousing only to fetch from a locker a crock of dried figs and apricots, and a bottle of Madeira wine of which he consumed the greater part. In the hot, stuffy cabin, Cordelia was too thirsty to eat the sweet fruit. She and James both tried calling through the forward window for water, but they were ignored so they had to ration out the contents of the one small pitcher.

All too much time to think—Cordelia began to wonder whether she would not have done better to stay in Istanbul as Mehmed Pasha’s mistress rather than to be sold into an unknown harem. Mama had seemed quite content with him. He was generous, and kind enough as long as matters went his way.

Mama’s lovers had all been kind to her, and all but one, quickly dismissed, to her daughter as well. Zio Simone had loved Mama, even wished it were possible to marry her. Had Mama loved him, too? When the moment came to part, had she bitterly regretted that her chosen way of life made the parting inevitable? Poor Mama, she had paid for her shameful behaviour even before her ignominious death.

That death played out before her mind’s eye in images as clear as if it had been yesterday, overwhelming her with the same helpless despair.

James shattered the mirage. “Don’t look so blue-devilled. While there’s life there’s hope.”

“I was thinking about my mother’s death,” Cordelia blurted out.

“I’m sorry. If I had known I’d not have spoken so abominably tactlessly.”

“How were you to guess? I was sure the memory must have faded after all this time, but I can still picture the accident as if it were taking place in front of me all over again.”

“My dear girl, you were present? I did not realize!”

“It was horrible.” She shuddered.

“Talking about it might help to exorcise the memory, if you would like to tell me.”

His gentleness decided Cordelia. Mehmed Pasha’s reaction had infuriated her; Zio Simone’s left her dissatisfied, because he did not comprehend that part of the horror lay in the sheer absurdity of her mother’s end. Perhaps James would understand.

Once again, haltingly, she told the tale. James showed not the least disposition to laugh, but as she finished, enlightenment coloured the sympathy in his face.

“Cats and camels: that explains your detestation of both. My poor dear, what a dreadful business! Quite apart from a natural reluctance, I can see why you shrink from speaking of it. Such preposterous mischances would be apt to arouse as much levity as pity in a thoughtless listener.”

“Mehmed Pasha laughed like a hyena.”

“Which must have added vastly to the pain of losing your mother.” He touched her hand as she nodded, immeasurably soothed by his discernment. “Well, you are safe from that hyena now. Have you any more notion than I of how to escape these Algerian beasts?”

“None.” Brought back from the dreadful past to the dreadful present, Cordelia found herself thirstier than ever and no nearer a solution. “When shall we reach Algiers?” she asked the captain.

“Tomorrow, senhorita,” he grunted morosely, “or the next day.”

Cordelia was given the captain’s brass bedstead for the night. Though she would just as soon have slept on the floor, for his sheets were hardly pristine and she had grown unaccustomed to dirt since Dubrovnik, she could scarcely tell him so. He took the only easy chair and James stretched out on the Turkey carpet.

None of them slept well, but both the men were in the arms of Morpheus when the first light of dawn stole into the cabin. Cordelia could not bear to stay abed any longer. Stepping over outflung arms and legs, she crept to the starboard window and peered out.

A shifting mist hung over the smooth, dark, undulating waves. Within it appeared the silhouette of a ship. A reflection of the becalmed
Flor do Campo
, Cordelia thought.

But it moved slowly through the fog, its lean, swift lines all wrong for the tubby merchantman, its sails catching the least wisp of breeze. Had the pirate ship returned to escort them for some reason? No, the brigantine’s deck had been bare, and surely that was the glint of a cannon’s barrel she saw.

“James!”

She spoke softly. The captain snored on. James woke instantly and was beside her in one lithe movement.

“What is it? Are you all right?”

“Look! Is that the Algerian ship?”

“Not the one that took us. It’s a frigate, I’d say. It may be one of theirs—”