Hector remained silent. When both he and Dan had been prisoners of the Barbary Turks, he had observed how greatly the Muslim rulers valued having a male heir.
‘When will I be allowed to speak with my betrothed? I have to reassure her that all is well,’ he said. Everything had happened so quickly that he hadn’t had a chance to exchange more than a few words with Maria, and she’d been confined to the cabin since coming on board.
‘That will be for the Sultan to decide,’ the chamberlain answered blandly. He paused, as if considering what to say next. Then he added in a cautionary tone, ‘When you meet His Highness, please remember that he is full of years, and that old men are given to strange fantasies. Their decisions sometimes seem erratic.’
Hector was left wondering uneasily whether his fate, and that of his companions, would now depend on the whims of a capricious dotard who ruled a bankrupt kingdom.
THE KORA KORA turned into a narrow, steep-sided river mouth on which the Sultan’s capital was situated. The place, Pehko, was a ramshackle settlement of bamboo and thatch houses. The nearest were little more than shacks poised on stilts over the grey-green surface of the fetid backwater. As the kora kora glided into harbour, Hector could see women and children standing on the rickety platforms, their arms held up to shade their eyes as they gazed at the return of their menfolk. A strong odour of drying fish and rotting debris mingled with the scent of wood smoke from the cooking fires and drifted across the water. Chickens and ducks foraged along the foreshore, where dozens of small dugout canoes were drawn up, and festoons of nets hung to dry on posts driven into the mud. He glimpsed more thatched dwellings farther up the slope, half-hidden among groves of tall trees, their foliage a deep, luxuriant green with glimpses of red and yellow fruit. There were only two buildings of any size. One was the mosque, for he could hear the call to prayer from its roof. The other was an untidy sprawling structure situated on high ground behind the town, where a curve of hillside gave a view directly down into the estuary. Even at a distance he could see the extravagant profusion of flags and banners sprouting from every corner and angle of the building, along the ridge of the roof and from triple flagstaffs in front of the grandiose portico.
‘Kedatun sultan, the palace of the Sultan,’ murmured the chamberlain as the kora kora came to rest against the wooden pilings of a jetty on the right bank. On the dockside six Omoro warriors were waiting. They were armed with spears and shields trimmed with horsehair. Behind them stood a bizarre-looking vehicle. The two rear wheels were almost the height of a man, their spokes and felloes painted in blue and green patterns, now faded and peeling. The two front wheels were one-third of the size and similarly decorated. Slung between them by leather straps hung a gilded sedan chair, its door panels showing pictures of leaves and flowers. But instead of horses between the shafts, the contraption was to be pulled by four servants, barefoot and wearing loincloths. On their heads, in imitation of horse decoration, they wore long, nodding plumes, orange and black, thrust into their turbans. As he watched, the young prince disembarked from the kora kora and stalked across to the carriage. The door was held open by a kneeling servant. The small prince stepped inside, and a moment later the team of humans were trotting away, dragging the carriage up towards the Sultan’s palace on the hillside.
A discreet nudge from Dan brought Hector’s attention back to his immediate surroundings. The chamberlain was indicating that it was time for him and his party to disembark and follow him. Hector turned to look for Maria, but it was too late. A cordon of armed Omoro already blocked his view and they were hustling Vlucht and the other Hollanders on to the jetty. Hector had a feeling that while he and his friends were not exactly prisoners, neither were they free to do as they pleased. He tried to push through the cordon back to the cabin, but his path was barred. Thwarted, he ran to catch up with Mansur, to ask again if he could speak with Maria. But Mansur was already at the entrance to a long, low building erected on pilings over the water.
‘Please make yourselves comfortable in here until the Sultan sends for you,’ he said suavely, standing aside so that Hector and the others could enter. ‘Food will be brought to you very soon.’ There was an awkward pause, and then he added, ‘The baru baru will be on hand to make sure that you are not disturbed.’ Then without another word he turned away, and an armed guard took up his position at the door. It was clear that the baru baru were the Sultan’s soldiers.
Hector and his companions found themselves in what was evidently some sort of warehouse. To judge by the mouldy smell, it had not been used for a very considerable time. Jezreel pushed open a wickerwork shutter to let in the light. The window looked out over the anchorage, and to their right they could see the kora kora still tied to the jetty. As a group of natives unhitched the towrope of the skiff, the goods that had been taken from the camp already lay in a heap on the waterfront.
‘We could break our way out of here at any time we wanted to,’ said Jezreel, tapping on the wall. It was flimsily made of leaves woven into frames of bamboo.
‘First, I’ve got to get Maria back,’ said Hector.
Jacques had been exploring the warehouse, which was partitioned into a number of large rooms. He came back with an armful of empty sacks that could serve as bedding. ‘Might as well make ourselves comfortable,’ he said cheerfully, throwing them on the floor.
Without warning, the door to the warehouse swung open and a file of a dozen women came in. They wore narrow dark-blue skirts that reached down to their bare feet, short cotton blouses and their hair was covered in headcloths of blue and white cotton. They were carrying covered earthenware bowls and several baskets whose contents were hidden beneath large leaves, and two large pitchers. These they set down on the floor and one of the women unwrapped a cloth bundle, which contained some wooden ladles and bowls. Then they withdrew. Not a word had been said, and it was noticeable that they had avoided looking directly at the strangers.
‘Now what have we got here?’ said Jacques with happy anticipation. He lifted the lid to one on the bowls and sniffed. ‘Fish stew, and a good one. And what are these?’ He peeled back the covering to one of the baskets and picked out what looked like a bun and bit into it. ‘Not bad. Reminds me of wheaten bread, but a little bland.’
‘Sago cake,’ said Vlucht. ‘Cheap food for the locals. Made from the pith of the sago palm. It grows wild in these parts.’
‘Cheap or not, it is a welcome change from rice,’ said Jacques appreciatively. He selected a ladle and stirred the fish soup vigorously. The ingredients swirled to the surface and he scooped up the floating morsels. After sucking up the contents of the ladle, he chewed for a few moments, then put his finger into his mouth and extracted a shred of white flesh.
‘What is this?’ he said, holding it up. ‘I thought it was fish stew.’
‘Sea slug,’ said Vlucht. ‘I came across it in China. Considered a great delicacy. Said to help your virility.’
‘Could be easier on the teeth,’ observed the Frenchman. ‘A bit chewy for some of our toothless Dutch friends over there.’
Toothless or not, the Westflinge’s survivors joined hungrily in the meal, before the company settled down for the night. Vlucht’s crew chose one of the adjoining rooms as their dormitory, and Hector and his friends, after neatly piling up the empty bowls and baskets near the door, spread out their sacks on the wooden floor and prepared to go to sleep. The only sound was the water lapping around the wooden pilings that supported the building.
Hector lay staring at the rafters. He was anxious about Maria. He sensed her captors wouldn’t harm her, and he was sure that she was well able to look after herself, but he was depressed by the feeling that somehow he’d failed her. Again and again he went over the events of the day, wondering if he could have done things differently and kept her beside him. But everything had happened so quickly and uncontrollably. He fretted that Maria would change her mind, that she wouldn’t want to share a future with someone whose life seemed to lurch from one crisis to the next. Beside him he heard Dan stir, and in the darkness he heard his friend’s quiet voice. ‘Maria is strong. She waited a long time for you to find her, and she’ll know that you will not let her down now. Try to get some rest, for tomorrow we will need to keep our wits about us.’