My escorts didn’t speak. The passage grew less gloomy as we climbed, arrow slits giving light, and I couldn’t help but have my hopes soar, even as trepidation grew. What was the point of seeing Aurora again? What could I agree to without betraying my country? Why had I been hauled out of the pit instead of someone more famous and reputable, like Cuvier? Because I was the weakest? But I had a reputation as a hero of Acre! None of it made sense. I blinked against the growing light, realizing just how dark and troll-like our lives had become. I felt confused, exhausted, and desperate.
A door opened, small enough that we had to squeeze through. Two soldiers filed before me, two behind. This corridor wasn’t much broader than my shoulders and again had no light except from an oil lamp. Was this a secret passageway? We came to an iron grill at the end that my escorts unlocked and then locked behind. Then we climbed a winding set of stone stairs. Yet another door was unbolted, this one wood, and at first I thought beyond was more darkness. But no, it was simply a tapestry covering the door. The cloth was swept aside and I was pushed through into some kind of reception room, this one brilliant to my eyes even though the sunlight was filtered through wood-grilled windows. I blinked. There was blue sea and sky beyond, and my heart quickened, even as I tensed for a sudden blade or shot. Were my captors simply giving me a last cruel glimpse of this sweet earth before sending me off it?
Not yet.
Aurora wasn’t there. Instead, I was face-to-face with Hamidou Dragut, our traitorous sea captain. He lounged on a cushion in what I realized was the richly decorated throne room, picking from a bowl of figs. My stomach growled at the sight of them. The room’s floor was strewn with thick Persian carpets and its marble walls were decorated with incised Arabic script that quoted the Koran. There was a gilded throne chair, the cerulean silk of its cushion embroidered with gold and its legs and arms studded with jewels. In one corner of the chamber was a leopard, lying on the cool floor and held to a pillar by a golden chain. Behind was its brass cage. The cat looked bored.
I’d come from hell to an odd little heaven.
Dragut looked me up and down. “She will be very disappointed. The pit has not improved you.”
I worked to keep any quaver from my voice. “Aurora Somerset is always disappointed. It’s her nature.”
“Don’t let your tongue betray your last remaining chance, American.”
Sometimes I can’t help myself, and my grit was slowly coming back. I was jealous he had figs and I was starving. “To be a slave to that woman, like you?”
He darkened. “I am no slave, and would die before becoming one.”
I took breath. “Tripoli is a nation of slaves. I could tell that much just marching from the harbor. Endless castes, each man quailing before the other, and your women bagged and hidden as if they carried the plague. You’ve never tasted freedom in your life, Dragut.”
“On the contrary, Monsieur Gage!” It was a new voice and I swung around. A door to the throne room opened and in strode the man I’d seen in the slave market on his white horse, Bashaw Yussef Karamanli himself. He was, as I’ve said, fit and handsome, a dagger in his sash and a sword at his side, and carried with him that confidence that comes from being born to royalty. Two powerful guards, one blond and one black, flanked him. His sword belt was studded with diamonds, and his turban had that jewel the size of a robin’s egg—emerald enough, I guessed, to put me in high style the rest of my life if I could ever find a way to snatch it. He also had the ruthless look that is inevitable to men who cling to power in dangerous places. He plopped onto the European throne chair while a janissary gave a blow to the back of my legs, forcing me to my knees before him. My head was wrenched down in obeisance.
“In this country each man enjoys the freedom of knowing his place and role, unlike the chaos of democracy,” Yussef went on with a scholarly air. “And our women have a freedom yours can’t imagine. Yes, they are covered, but that means they can go anywhere in the city without being recognized, meaning they are free from malicious gossip and disapproving eyes. Behind the veil they have a liberty no American or French woman enjoys. They are mistresses of their houses, and in the cool of the evening they emerge on the screened roofs to talk and sing in a world free of harassment from men. No woman can keep secrets more readily than a Muslim woman, no woman is happier, and no woman is better protected by her husband. You will see if you take the turban. We have a harmony, a serenity, unknown in Europe.”
My head came up. “I’ve experienced Aurora’s serenity.”
“Ah. Lady Somerset is…unique. And no Muslim.”
“And she has nothing to say to you, at least not yet,” Dragut said. “That will await some sudden birth of reason on the part of yourself and your companions. No, I brought you up to confer first with someone quite different, to see if we cannot be partners.”
“We have nothing you want to know.”
“From four savants? I’m skeptical of that.”
“And if we did, it will die with us. I insisted on honor.” I’m inclined to exaggerate, if nobody is around to correct me.
“Did you?” He licked his fingers of the stickiness of the figs and suddenly sprang up. He wore, I saw, Cuvier’s two pistols in his sash. The guards were similarly armed, and looked ready to spring. Everyone had weapons enough to rob a mail coach, meaning I was not exactly trusted. “I appreciate men of honor,” Dragut said. He rapped on the door Yussef had come through. “They can be trusted to do the right thing.”
There was the sound of a lock being turned, a creak, and the heavy door swung open. A pale, corpulent, hairless slave—a eunuch, I guessed, the gelded men allowed to attend a harem—marched into our meeting place with pretentious authority, as if his rank exceeded that of the pirate captain and soldiers before him. But he fell before Yussef, his forehead touching the floor. And then another figure came through to slip around the eunuch and stand in a shaft of dazzling sunlight, like the apparition of an angel.
All sense left me then, and I heard a roaring in my ears. My knees went weak.
It was Astiza, my lost love from Egypt, as beautiful as ever.
With her, dressed like a little sultan, was a boy of just over two years. He looked at me with bright, cautious curiosity.
“Hello, Ethan,” Astiza said. “This is your son, Horus.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Astiza was as striking as I remembered. She’s a Mediterranean beauty, Greek and Egyptian, her hair silk and piled for this reunion, held in place with a golden pin. She has eyes to drown in, dark and deep, and they shone with a bright intelligence that might frighten some men but captivated me. She was not as conventionally beautiful as Aurora Somerset but had a thousand times more character, the set of her lip or the waiting question of her eyes hinting at a depth of emotion the English noblewoman had no knowledge of. There was bright steel in Astiza, but vulnerability, too, and while she always seemed ready to slip away (that independence!) she once had need of me as well, as baffled by her attraction to me as I was by my longing for her. We had electricity. We understood each other’s hopes in an unspoken way I’d never shared with another woman. Slim, poised, draped in Arabian finery, her sandals silver and her jewelry braided gold, she seemed a dream after the ghastliness of Omar and the horror of his dungeons.