The Sea and the Sand Page 8

  Therefore, why did she continue to survive? The Moors had certainly considered it a possibility that she might choose not to. When she had been brought down to this noisome pit in the very bowels of the ship, below the waterline so far as she could judge, they had stripped off her clothing. She had shrieked her horror and disgust, assuming that it was but the prelude to some bestial assault, but as they had not harmed her in any way she had realised they merely intended to prevent her from being able to smother herself. In fact, the thought had never actually crossed her mind. Life was too precious, even as a captive, for her to contemplate suicide. And besides, she did not know she was the only survivor, for certain. There might be other pits like this one, scattered all over the ship. To that hope she clung.

  And the Moors had in fact treated her with great circumspection; apart from the fact that they kept her naked. Except when bathing, she had never been naked in her life before. Now her nakedness both added to and detracted from the horror of her situation. As she was never taken from the cabin, it soon became an open sewer, but twice a day the door was thrown wide and buckets of salt water were hurled in, over her and over the floor, until the place was awash. At first she had supposed they intended to drown her, then she realised there were drains in the corner of the cabin which allowed the water to flow through to the bilges, from whence, presumably, it was pumped out from time to time with all its noisome contents. The feeling of cleanliness after each of these douches had raised her spirits, but the salt water had also left her itchy and uncomfortable, and her hair as stiff as a board.

  Until yesterday. Yesterday had been different. Last evening she had been taken on deck. The thought had been horrifying. To be exposed to all of those men … She had shut her eyes tightly until more buckets of water had been emptied over her, when the sting of the cool breeze had forced them open. Certainly there had been men, staring at her, laughing and commenting to each other; but as she had no idea what they were saying it did not really matter. She was in fact so relieved by the wind playing about her, scattering her hair, that she almost felt happy. And then she had looked past the bow of the ship, and seen the loom of the Rock. She had recognised it immediately from pictures her parents had shown her before their departure. The corsair was well to the south of it, of course, on the Morrocan side of the Strait, so that they could seek shelter should they be challenged by any British cruiser. But it was there … as if it would ever mean anything to her again.

  It had to. Just over there, not ten miles away, was her family. There was the British Navy, the most feared fighting force in the world, every member of which would be on his way to rescue her the moment it was learned what had happened to her. She had to survive for that triumphal moment, no matter what was done to her before they arrived.

  No matter what was to happen to her now.

  The captain, having inspected her, lowered the lantern. Whenever he looked at her long and slow like that, her blood seemed to coagulate, her skin to grow cold, no matter how determined her resolutions. It was not just the memory of what he had already done to her, where he had touched her, where he had looked; it was also the thought of what she knew he would like to do to her, every time his gaze drifted over her naked limbs — and she did not even know what a man could do to a woman. But she instinctively turned on her side, although not too far, so that he could look at only one thigh and one buttock, while her groin was hidden, at the same time as she folded her arms across her breasts. Those movements were instinctive, and yet hardly seemed to concern him. Because she actually was quite safe. Whatever he might want from her, he wanted his profit more.

  ‘We passed through the Strait in the night,’ he said in his surprisingly good English. ‘Soon we will enter the port of Algiers. You must prepare to go ashore.’ He extended his hand. ‘Come.’

  She remained crouched against the bulkhead, and his tone became imperative. ‘Come!’

  He snapped his fingers, and two of his men, who must have been waiting for just such a summons, entered the cabin. Hastily Felicity pushed herself up; she had no wish to be manhandled more than was necessary. Yet they still gripped her arms and half dragged her up the ladders to the deck, where more men waited with another assortment of buckets. She had not expected another bath so soon, and somehow it was vastly different in the harsh brightness of the morning sunlight than in the gloom of the previous evening. But before she could catch her breath the water was emptied over her, while she shivered and blinked and gasped for breath, and listened to the chatter of the men, and looked past them again, hoping for another glimpse of the Rock. But instead she saw in front of her a brown sea coast, from which a range of hills, equally brown, rose sharply, while in the distance she was sure she could see mountain peaks. On the edge of the coast, and directly before the ship, she looked at a town, rising away from fortified breakwaters and up the hill behind, dominated by a fortress on the hilltop, and presenting an aspect of startling whiteness against the drab colours of the surrounding country.

  ‘Algiers,’ the captain said, standing beside her and to her consternation squeezing her buttocks. ‘That is my home.’

  His sudden familiarity, both of word and deed, left her brain spinning, and again before she could recover she discovered herself being wrapped in a white linen garment, more like an enormous towel than a cloak, as it lacked buttons or ties and required being tucked into its own folds, which task was carried out with great enthusiasm by the man attending to her. Enough of the material was left free, even after it had been wrapped round her body several times, and allowed to fall in folds down to her ankles, to be used as a cowl for her head. Before this was set in place a white face mask was placed over her nose and mouth and chin, and secured by means of a draw string on the back of her head. Then the cowl was draped across her hair, so that only her eyes and perhaps an inch of forehead were left exposed, together with her hands and feet. But sandals were now being fitted over her toes.

  It seemed utterly incongruous, after having been kept naked for three days, to be so utterly concealed. But her immediate feelings, even her fears as her wrists were pulled together in front of her and secured by a length of velvet cord, were submerged beneath her growing interest in the port they were now entering. It was a place clearly of much trade and prosperity, judging by the number of ships either unloading or taking on victuals alongside the various quays — most of them very similar to the corsair on whose deck she stood, and no doubt also pirates — by the activity along the waterfront, the babble of voices, the dust stirred by the passage of both people and animals. The appearance of her ship caused much comment and additional interest, as the sails were handed with great smartness, the huge boom of the lateen mainsail brought inboard to be stowed, and the vessel slipped expertly alongside an empty space in the dock. Warps were hurled and caught by waiting men to make the ship fast, and people clustered the quayside to shout questions at the crew, the men all armed, the women, she was relieved to note, dressed much as she was.

  But she was not left to enjoy the scene for very long. Also waiting on the quayside were three very sumptuously dressed individuals, with jewelled red fezzes on their heads and jewelled buttons on their jackets. In complete contrast to everyone else, they carried no weapons at all and, as they came on board the moment the gangplank was run ashore, she observed that although they certainly appeared to be full grown men, they wore no beards or moustaches, again in complete contrast to everyone around them. Indeed, their faces seemed entirely hairless. Their voices, too, were high and harsh, as they chattered with the captain, descending into the hold to examine what lay there.

  When they re-emerged, they seemed quite pleased, but were less so when they came aft to survey herself. They made no attempt to uncover any part of her, to her relief, but frowned and spoke sharply to the captain, so much so that she did not know whether to be insulted that they thought so little of her, or hopeful that they might, so to speak, throw her back.

  Her feelings were p
ut to right by the captain himself. ‘You are to go with these people,’ he told her. ‘They are eunuchs, who work for my lord and master, Sheikh Abd er Rahman. They will take you to his house, and there your future will be decided. They are disappointed that there is only one of you, but they know that it is rare for even a single English beauty, who is also a virgin, to fall into our possession. Now listen to me well, English girl. You will be sold, and if you are fortunate you will spend the rest of your life in the harem of some wealthy man. The life you will lead will depend upon yourself. Accept your fate, and please your lord, and you will be happy. Bear your lord a son, and you may achieve heights you have never dreamed of. But resist him or anger him, and it will be the bastinado, if you are not drowned in a sack. Remember always that your lord has absolute power over you, of life and death. Now go with God.’

  She felt incapable of response, as much because of her surprise at his obvious liking for her as by the horrendous fate he had just outlined. She was going to be sold as a slave. Her parents had had three black slaves in their house at Catries in St Lucia, jolly girls who had become almost her friends, when she had overcome her initial fear of them — she had been only twelve, and straight from England, when she had seen black people for the first time. But one of them had been lazy and occasionally insolent, and Mama had at last determined to get rid of her. Felicity could still remember the girl’s terrified wails and pleas for mercy when she had realised she was going to be sold to a planter.

  She remembered other things, too; of visiting a plantation once to take tea with the lady of the house, and passing large wooden triangles from which there had hung the naked bodies of both men and women, their backs a mass of open cuts, some of which had been so deep she had thought she could see their bones exposed, before she had hastily looked away. There were other tales, even more sinister, of the way some planters mishandled their belongings. Because the black people had been belongings. She remembered feeling sorry for them, but in an abstract fashion. Their fates and hers were too far separated for her truly to be able to understand anything of their feelings.

  Now she would have to understand such feelings. She was to become such a chattel herself. But she would understand, she determined fiercely and she would survive, too. For just as long as she had to.

  Yet when one of the eunuchs spoke to her sharply,and another seized her bound wrists to jerk her towards the gangway, her courage nearly failed her. Eunuchs! Once again, a phenomenon of which she had only been dimly aware in the past, but never truly recognised — the concept was too horrible. But that, too, was now a sudden terrifying reality.

  She looked at the captain, now such a rock of comfort and sympathy.

  ‘You must go,’ he said.

  ‘Your name?’ she gasped. ‘Please!’

  ‘I am Mansur,’ he replied. ‘But we will not meet again, English girl. Now go.’

  She stumbled across the gangplank and on to the quay, and nearly fell at the sudden cessation of movement beneath her feet. People stared at her as the eunuchs caught her arms to hold her up and force her forward. She was unused to the sandals and her toes kept kicking stones, most painfully. Several times she would have fallen, but for the hands holding her up. She was aware of blinding heat, as the glare of the sun reflected from the white walls of the houses, soon followed by a tremendous thirst. Her eyes were narrowed to little slits as they began to water, and the whole discomfort was too much for her to observe much of her surroundings.

  She knew that she was in the middle of a crowd of men, women, and children, all talking in high pitched voices, of dogs growling and barking, and asses braying, and scents and odours tickling her nostrils, and laughter; she caught glimpses of shops, in the doorways of which hung splendidly worked carpets or bolts of materials, and in which stood men, smoking pipes and surveying the world go by. She was aware, too, that she passed people who were clearly Europeans for all their Moorish dress and sun tanned skins; several of them even looked English — but she was also aware that these were slaves, hurrying about their masters’ business, and they all carefully averted their eyes from the eunuchs and their obvious captive.

  But most of all she was aware of the steepness of the hill she was climbing, so that she soon ran out of breath, and could only stumble along, panting and gasping, her breathing not helped by the unfamiliar face mask, until mercifully, and quite without warning, she was pushed through an arched doorway opening off the street. A bead curtain brushed her face and head, and she found herself in blessed shade, and in surroundings of some luxury, too.

  The room in which she stood was not large, but there were thick carpets on the floor and sumptuous divans against the walls, and beyond, an inner courtyard which was a place of quiet beauty, far removed from the dust and hubbub of the street, in which flower beds and palm trees surrounded a fish pond, filled with brilliantly coloured, darting goldfish.

  She was led into this courtyard and across it, into another section of the house. The eunuchs took her down a short corridor to arrive before a door made of heavy wood. One of the eunuchs produced a bunch of keys, and after some effort, turned the lock. The door was pushed in, and Felicity followed, to discover herself in a long gallery, almost dark after the brightness of the glare outside, because there were no windows, although the right hand wall was actually a trellis-work screen, with tiny apertures through which could be glimpsed another inner courtyard, larger than the one at the front of the house, but just as beautiful, and reached by a door at the end of the gallery.

  Even as she realised that this Abd er Rahman must be a man of considerable wealth, both to own a pirate ship and an establishment of this much size and luxury, she also became aware that she was in a very special place, both from the subtle, but entirely feminine scents which surrounded her and, as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, she realised that the left hand wall was actually a series of doorways leading off the gallery into inner chambers.

  From these there now came eight women, dressed in a fashion she would not have considered acceptable in her wildest fantasies. Each of them wore wide, loose silk pantaloons, clasped at waist and ankle — but utterly sheer to reveal that there was nothing but flesh underneath. Their breasts were as exposed as their crotches by the small embroidered bolero jackets which hung from their shoulders, and moved to and fro as they walked. Their feet were encased in velvet slippers, and they wore small fezzes, rather like those of the eunuchs, on top of their abundant hair.

  In fact, as each of them wore a set of different coloured garments, fez, bolero, pantaloons and slippers all matching, they made a splendidly kaleidoscopic picture, of pink and yellow and pale blue and crimson, and mauve and white and green and orange, and although two of them were definitely past their first youth and inclined to plumpness, the other six were young and slender, at least two hardly older than herself, Felicity calculated, and as they did not wear their yashmaks here in the harem — where she now knew herself to be — she could see that two them were decidedly pretty.

  But she was utterly embarrassed, not merely at being in their presence at all when they were in such a state of undress, but because she realised, even as she attempted not to look at them, that their bodies were utterly devoid of hair, although that on their heads was the last word in luxuriant and sweet-smelling dark cleanliness.

  Even more embarrassing, however, was the appearance of several children, half a dozen girls, ranging in ages from a toddler of about three to an obvious teenager, all dressed exactly like their mothers — as at least two of the women had to be — and equally disconcertingly depilated. There were also three very young boys, the eldest of whom could not have been more than eight years old, but even so, Felicity was most relieved to observe that they were fully dressed, in tunics and breeches.

  And if she was embarrassed by them, they were not embarrassed by her, or by the presence of the eunuchs, whom they greeted familiarly. They surrounded Felicity, pulled the cloak from her shoulders and let it fal
l to the floor to leave her naked, while they examined her with the greatest interest. With her hands still bound together in front of her, she could do nothing to stop them, and in any event she thought it safest to remain absolutely still, even as they fingered her hair, drawing it in great strands away from her head, stroked her skin, felt her breasts and buttocks and even her stomach, and pulled her pubic hair with curious comments.

  The sensations induced by their presence, and her helplessness in their midst, would, she knew, have made her faint only a few days before — or should have. As she had survived everything else which had happened to her since the capture of the Poseidon without fainting, she began to wonder if there was something the matter with her, and indeed, she was less interested in being manhandled in so intimate a fashion than in the remarks they were making, which she could not understand, but which she decided, from the way they wrinkled their noses, were far from complimentary. But she could understand that after two days in the cabin of the corsair, following five insalubrious days in the cabin of the Poseidon, she could neither look nor smell in any way attractive.

  The inspection completed, the oldest of the women, obviously the senior wife or concubine, gave orders, and the eunuchs marched her forward again, through one of the doors to her left. As the woman did not look particularly unfriendly, Felicity licked her lips as expressively as she could to convey her thirst, and the woman appeared to understand, for she gave another order, and one of the younger girls hurried off and came back with a cup of liquid for her to drink. It wasn’t water, to her surprise, but yet tasted better than anything she had ever drunk before, except that it made her aware of how hungry she was.

  But she was apparently not going to be allowed to eat for a while. She had gathered that the women’s derogatory remarks had been with regard to the length of time since her last proper bath more than to any defects in her face or figure. This they now proceeded to remedy. Felicity understood that survival entailed not resisting them in any way, but in fact she did not wish to — whatever lay ahead of her, to be again clean and sweet-smelling, something she had so anticipated on her arrival in Gibraltar, was a most attractive thought, even if she realised that the eunuchs were going to share in the operation. And the children!