Silver Angel

  She didn't appreciate the changes he had wrought in the small cabin. Swaths of brightly colored silk had been hung from the walls. Rugs of soft fur covered the entire floor now. A thick mattress had been found and draped in silk, then adorned with wide pillows. A copper hip bath sat in a corner behind a latticed screen. A small chest of sweet-smelling soaps and oils rested beside it. She hadn't touched it. The water he heated for her each day went unused.

  And she wasn't eating, not a morsel since her capture. The captain had even opened his own store of delicacies to tempt her, but nothing did. Hakeem was at his wit's end. He had told her she had nothing to fear. He had told her she had a life of riches and wondrous pleasures awaiting her, that she would probably be bought by some high official wanting a wife, that wives had much more freedom than concubines. He insisted she would be happy beyond her wildest dreams. She seemed not to care, or she simply didn't believe him. He didn't know what to say to her anymore.

  "You are wasting away to nothing, lalla. If you die, what purpose is served?"

  "A good one," Chantelle retorted. "I keep a Burke from becoming a slave."

  Hakeem sighed. "For men, it isn't desirable. But for women, it is different. I have told you—"

  "Nothing that matters!" she cut in heatedly. "I'd still be a slave!"

  Hakeem stared at the uneaten food on the silver tray and stiffened his resolve. There was no help for it now. She had to be made to eat.

  "Your strength is dwindling to nothing, lalla. Soon it will be too late to save you."

  "So?"

  "So when it becomes apparent to Rais Mehmed that you will not live to reach Barikah, you will no longer be of value to him. He will give you to his crew for what use they can make of you until you die."

  She smothered a gasp at such barbarity and glared furiously at the little Turk. "I've already been raped once aboard this ship! A few more times isn't going to matter."

  "Raped? Are you mad, woman? Your virginity doubles your value. Rais Mehmed would skin alive—"

  "Your bloody captain helped to hold me down!"

  Hakeem was speechless for a moment, and then he had to strain to keep from laughing. Could she really be that innocent? But of course she was, or she wouldn't think she had been raped.

  "Lalla, you are still a virgin," Hakeem assured her gently.

  "I'm not stupid!" she snapped.

  "No, no, of course not. But you are young and— and it is easy to mistake what was done to you. The one who, ah, touched you—he couldn't . . . what I mean is, he was incapable ... he was a eunuch. Do you know what that means?"

  Chantelle's cheeks flooded with color. "Yes."

  ''What he did was discover if you still possess the prized hymen, and you do. It was necessary, lalla, to determine your value. It is done to all female captives."

  She was no longer listening to his explanation. She felt like a fool for having drawn the wrong conclusion, but she was surprised, too, at the overwhelming relief in knowing she was still a maiden. But the humiliation of the experience would never be forgotten, and nothing had really changed. She was still going to be sold into slavery.

  "It doesn't matter, Hakeem."

  He became angry at such stubbornness. "Then you don't mind being raped by a dozen men?"

  She flinched, but shook her head. What difference a dozen men now or one man later repeatedly? She was going to be raped either way. At least this way it would be over with, and how long could she last anyway, as weak as she was?

  "Then you won't mind a little pain first, will you?" Hakeem demanded.

  Chantelle narrowed her eyes on him. "What do you mean?"

  "Do you really think Rais Mehmed will sit by and do nothing to change your mind? You have until the end of this day, lalla, before he has you bastinadoed. And if you do not understand that this is a form of torture that does not mar the skin, and so does not decrease your value, then I will explain. The soles of your feet will be beaten with a stick. If your feet are sensitive, it is extremely painful. If not, it is still a most unpleasant experience. Are you willing to suffer for your death?"

  Her answer was to push herself to a sitting position in front of the tray of food, but her eyes cut into him with furious venom. "You're a bastard, Hakeem Bek-tash," she said with cold intensity. "Why in hell didn't you tell me about your bloody bastinado sooner?"

  "I had hoped you would not prove so stubborn, lalla. It is not a good trait for a woman. If you had given in on your own, it would have been easier for me to help you."

  "The only way you can help me is to get me off this ship before it's too late."

  He shook his head slowly, his expression rueful. "That I cannot do. But there is much I can teach you—the customs of the East, the language. I can prepare you for your new life, if you'll let me. And is it not better to be prepared, to arm yourself with understanding, than to walk in blindly to this new life?"

  For a long moment Chantelle stared at him. And then she reached for the bread on her tray, her nod just barely perceptible. But it was a nod. She might be stubborn, but she wasn't a fool.

  Chapter Nine

  The days passed with alarming speed for Chantelle. Hakeem became her constant companion, and almost every waking moment was spent learning something: Muslim customs, Barikahian history, the role of Near Eastern women; but mostly Arabic, the language most common in Barikah and which Hakeem had been raised to speak, though he also imparted what little Turkish he was familiar with as well, since this was the language still preferred by the high officials. Chantelle absorbed all she could. Once she had concluded that Hakeem was right—to be prepared was to be forearmed—she not only wanted to learn but insisted on it.

  Yet it wasn't easy, taking it all in. Trying to grasp a new language was especially difficult when half her mind was clogged with fear. And she couldn't escape the fear.

  She tried. She looked for and found a bright side to this misfortune. She had needed to disappear without a trace for a while, and leaving England had certainly accomplished that. She even managed to dredge up some hope that all was not lost. If she could enter a fairly large harem, it was likely she might never be called on to spend the night with the master. Hakeem had told her that when a man had more than twenty females in his household, not all gained his notice. Of course, Hakeem insisted she would have no trouble being noticed. But she had no intention of drawing attention to herself. And then somehow she would escape, find her way to the English consul, and he would smuggle her out of Barikah and home.

  The thought of eventually finding her way home was something to cling to. It was all she had. Yet the fear was still there, for she had her sale to get through, and Hakeem refused to tell her much about that. Until that was over, everything was in doubt, since there was always the possibility that she might be bought by a man who had no wives, no household of women in which she could lose herself, a man who would rape her, though he might marry her and have children by her, God forbid. Then where would she be? Lost. Forever. Oh, horrid, horrid.

  And Hakeem, that sometime idiot, thought to cheer her by telling her how likely it was that the man who bought her would want to marry her. "He will be extremely rich, for he could not afford you otherwise. And you will be his favorite, his ikbal. You will bear him fine sons, and he will honor you by making you his first wife."

  First wife. She cringed every time she heard that. It was bad enough that where she was going a man was allowed four wives if he so wanted, but he could also keep as many concubines as he could afford. Potentially hundreds of women for one man. It was inconceivable to her European mind. She didn't see how the women could tolerate it. But then she had to remind herself that they had no choice, for concubines were slaves, captured in war, raids, and by piracy. Theirs was a culture steeped in slavery.

  "Was your life so much better?" Hakeem demanded one day when she was particularly resentful of what he was telling her. "Braz says he found you running away with your little bundle of clothes."

&nbsp
; That didn't sit well with her. "At least I had choices, Hakeem. I didn't have to stay and be forced to marry a man who was unacceptable to me. But what choices do I have now?"

  "You can accept your new life or not. You can go far, lalla, if you so choose. Riches can be yours, and freedom of a sort. You need only strive to be the favorite—"

  "I won't prostitute myself! I'd rather be a scullery slave!"

  He threw up his hands in disgust and left her alone. And she cried—because it was true. She would rather do the meanest chores than warm some stranger's bed, but she would rather not do either. Oh, God, did Charles Burke have more to atone for now! It was his fault she was here, his fault she was so frightened and helpless, facing a life abhorrent to her.

  They would assume she had run away. Aunt Ellen would have come to Dover, and after being told what they had planned for Chantelle, she would assume she had run away, too. But she would also assume that Chantelle would contact her at the soonest opportunity, and she would wait in vain, wondering, and then worrying when time passed and she had no word. And no one would ever know what had really happened to Chantelle. She had simply disappeared from England without a trace.

  There had been only one bad storm that delayed the ship's progress for several days. Chantelle hoped for more, but the weather held fine, too fine, the heat increasing in the small cabin soon after they had slipped through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar to enter the Mediterranean Sea. The very next day, she was witness to the corsairs in action.

  It came as a shock when the ship began readying for attack, and Hakeem rushed in to explain what was happening. They had passed other ships in the Atlantic without incident, so Chantelle had assumed they weren't after any more prizes on this voyage. Wrong. They simply did their attacking in familiar waters.

  "You need not worry, lalla. It is doubtful we will need to use the ship's guns. It is nearly evening, so we can take the merchantman by surprise, approaching down-sun of her so it will be difficult for her to identify us. The rais has already raised identical colors, and we have a man who speaks her tongue to hail her and lull her. We will board her before she is aware she is in danger."

  Chantelle wasn't worried. But she was excited. This was a possibility she hadn't counted on—hope from an unexpected quarter. If the corsairs' ship failed in its attack, if it should be captured instead, she would be saved.

  She began to pray the minute Hakeem left her, and continued for the next half hour. That was all it took. The noise was horrible, the shouts and screams, the clanging of scimitars on shields, but she was to learn it was only the corsairs who made the racket, which was part of their strategy to terrify their victims. And it worked. The Neapolitan merchantman was easy prey, the crew so taken by surprise that there was little bloodshed. All were made prisoners and the other vessel torched, since the corsairs didn't have enough men to spare as a crew for the prize.

  For three days after, Chantelle fell into a depression that nothing could shake, thinking of the men now chained in the hold who, like her, would be sold. And like her fate, what would happen to them was unknown. Hakeem had been willing to enlighten her, but not after she was so appalled to hear the prisoners would be led from the ship near naked and in chains. He refused to continue, assuring her only that her arrival in Barikah would be very different.

  It might be different, but it was no less terrifying, as she found out a short twelve days after the merchantman was captured. Seen through the one small porthole her cabin boasted, Barikah glistened on the North African coast, the Barbary Coast, as the long strip extending from Morocco to Egypt was called. It was a white jewel shimmering in the hot midday sun. Flat-roofed, whitewashed houses crowded together, rising one above the next on steep hills, flanked on both sides by the verdant green of pastures and fields, with the brilliant blue waters of the harbor below, the cloudless azure sky above. Seen from afar, the Eastern flavor stood out starkly in the green-tiled cupolas of huge domed mosques towering above the houses, each with four minarets rising toward the sky like pointed needles. Cone-topped watchtowers stood out, too. So did a large building sitting atop the tallest hill and surrounded by thick walls that could only be the palace of the Dey.

  Closer to the harbor were other large buildings seen just above the high walls that surrounded Barikah: warehouses for the cargoes from the commercial ships of many different nations that crowded the harbor, barracks for the soldiers who manned the walls where twenty batteries protected the bay with more than a thousand cannon, bagnios which housed the huge work force of slaves.

  There was also the spire of a Christian church, but Chantelle unfortunately didn't notice this. If she had, she might have lost some of the trepidation now filling her violet eyes, for Hakeem had not bothered to tell her the Dey of Barikah was tolerant of Christians,

  that many lived here who weren't slaves, that there was a whole European community in the city. A Christian church was a sign of sanctuary, a haven that would be easy to find when she escaped, whereas the English consulate would not be as easy to locate. But she didn't see it, and she didn't see the city for very long either, at least not all of it, once the ship came about to maneuver toward its berth.

  Not long after, there was the sound of the male prisoners being led onto the deck after twelve horrid days spent in the hold. The moans, the clanking of chains, sent Chantelle rushing for her bed to cover her ears and stifle her sobs of fear in her pillows. How long before she, too, would be led from this temporary haven? Yes, the ship was now a haven compared with what awaited her ashore.

  But time passed and no one came for her. Her tears dried. Her fears gave way to emotional exhaustion. She was almost ready to accept anything just to get it over with so she could stop being constantly afraid.

  When Hakeem did finally come to the cabin, it was nearing evening. He had a tray of food for her, and clothes draped over one arm.

  Chantelle took one look at the food and thought she would throw up, her stomach was so in knots. "Take it away."

  ''You will not be leaving the ship until late tonight, when the city is quiet. In the meantime you must eat, lalla."

  "I'd hate to tell you what you can do with that food, Hakeem."

  He smiled at her surly tone, but it was a sad smile. Her puffy eyes gave evidence of her misery. Captives weren't to be pitied. They were merchandise, nothing more, though this one was much more valuable than most. And yet he did pity her. She was such a contradiction with her eyes spitting defiance at him while her mouth quivered with a touching vulnerability.

  Hakeem had unfortunately fallen a little bit in love with her, though he didn't know it. But there was nothing he could do about the strange feelings she stirred in him. There was nothing he could do for her either. He wouldn't even be the one to take her ashore, and once she left the ship, he would never see her again.

  What she needed was courage so that she wouldn't get into trouble from her sharp tongue, which seemed to be her natural response to fear, and it was a dangerous response. A Muslim admired courage, but no insults; spirit, but not insolence. And Hamid Sharif, to whom she would be taken tonight, was not a man known for his understanding or patience.

  "Did you not tell me you were gently bred?" Hakeem asked her, setting the tray of food down on a little stool, which thusly turned the tray into an adequate low table. "An heiress? The daughter of an English nobleman?"

  "Bravo," Chantelle retorted. "Your memory does you proud."

  "I cannot say the same about your shrewishness, lalla. " He heard her affronted gasp but went on relentlessly. "If you had not told me these things about yourself, I would think you were a peasant. Peasants have no more sense than to bite at the hand that holds their life. A noble is wiser, having the sense to know when to give up the fight without losing one's pride."

  "Don't you dare tell me how to act when you can't possibly know how I feel!"

  "No, I cannot know," he agreed. "I can only tell you that you have value, and so will be treated well and with
care. But when a slave loses value, it is nothing to have him beaten, sold, or killed. That is never likely to happen to you, because your value is not in a strong back or a special skill, but in your comeliness. Yet undesirable traits will not be tolerated, and there are many punishments that can be inflicted without marring your value."

  "Why do you tell me this?" she asked resentfully.

  "So that you do not make the mistake of appearing less than you are, and therefore lower your value. You are a lady, one with pride and intelligence. It is your right to expect to be treated as such, and so you will be, if this is how you act. A certain amount of fear is only natural. But how you deal with that fear is the question. Do you show it, holding yourself up to ridicule and abuse, or do you conceal it behind a bearing suitable to your previous class and station?"

  "I still don't see-"

  "Think, woman!" he snapped impatiently. "How you are perceived is how you will be treated. A village wench, no matter how comely, is known to be accustomed to hardship, and so need not be treated with the greatest care. Why subject yourself to that needlessly?"