The Essential Rafael Sabatini Collection. Rafael Sabatini
She stiffened as if he had charged her unjustly.
"I do not fear," she assured him, and if her face continued white, her eyes grew steady, her voice was resolute.
"Then come," he repeated, and she obeyed him instantly now as if to prove the absence of all fear.
Side by side they passed up the gangway and mounted the steps of the companion to the poop, their approach watched by the group that was in possession of it with glances at once of astonishment and resentment.
Asad's dark, smouldering eyes were all for the girl. They followed her every movement as she approached and never for a moment left her to turn upon her companion.
Outwardly she bore herself with a proud dignity and an unfaltering composure under that greedy scrutiny; but inwardly she shrank and writhed in a shame and humiliation that she could hardly define. In some measure Oliver shared her feelings, but blent with anger; and urged by them he so placed himself at last that he stood between her and the Basha's regard to screen her from it as he would have screened her from a lethal weapon. Upon the poop he paused, and salaamed to Asad.
"Permit, exalted lord," said he, "that my wife may occupy the quarters I had prepared for her before I knew that thou wouldst honour this enterprise with thy presence."
Curtly, contemptuously, Asad waved a consenting hand without vouchsafing to reply in words. Sakr-el-Bahr bowed again, stepped forward, and put aside the heavy red curtain upon which the crescent was wrought in green. From within the cabin the golden light of a lamp came out to merge into the blue-gray twilight, and to set a shimmering radiance about the white-robed figure of Rosamund.
Thus for a moment Asad's fierce, devouring eyes observed her, then she passed within. Sakr-el-Bahr followed, and the screening curtain swung back into its place.
The small interior was furnished by a divan spread with silken carpets, a low Moorish table in coloured wood mosaics bearing the newly lighted lamp, and a tiny brazier in which aromatic gums were burning and spreading a sweetly pungent perfume for the fumigation of all True-Believers.
Out of the shadows in the farther corners rose silently Sakr-el-Bahr's two Nubian slaves, Abiad and Zal-Zer, to salaam low before him. But for their turbans and loincloths in spotless white their dusky bodies must have remained invisible, shadowy among the shadows.
The captain issued an order briefly, and from a hanging cupboard the slaves took meat and drink and set it upon the low table--a bowl of chicken cooked in rice and olives and prunes, a dish of bread, a melon, and a clay amphora of water. Then at another word from him, each took a naked scimitar and they passed out to place themselves on guard beyond the curtain. This was not an act in which there was menace or defiance, nor could Asad so interpret it. The acknowledged presence of Sakr-el-Balir's wife in that poop-house, rendered the place the equivalent of his hareem, and a man defends his hareem as he defends his honour; it is a spot sacred to himself which none may violate, and it is fitting that he take proper precaution against any impious attempt to do so.
Rosamund sank down upon the divan, and sat there with bowed head, her hands folded in her lap. Sakr-el-Bahr stood by in silence for a long moment contemplating her.
"Eat," he bade her at last. "You will need strength and courage, and neither is possible to a fasting body."
She shook her head. Despite her long fast, food was repellent. Anxiety was thrusting her heart up into her throat to choke her.
"I cannot eat," she answered him. "To what end? Strength and courage cannot avail me now."
"Never believe that," he said. "I have undertaken to deliver you alive from the perils into which I have brought you, and I shall keep my word."
So resolute was his tone that she looked up at him, and found his bearing equally resolute and confident.
"Surely," she cried, "all chance of escape is lost to me."
"Never count it lost whilst I am living," he replied. She considered him a moment, and there was the faintest smile on her lips.
"Do you think that you will live long now?" she asked him.
"Just as long as God pleases," he replied quite coolly. "What is written is written. So that I live long enough to deliver you, then... why, then, faith I shall have lived long enough."
Her head sank. She clasped and unclasped the hands in her lap. She shivered slightly.
"I think we are both doomed," she said in a dull voice. "For if you die, I have your dagger still, remember. I shall not survive you."
He took a sudden step forward, his eyes gleaming, a faint flush glowing through the tan of his cheeks. Then he checked. Fool! How could he so have misread her meaning even for a moment? Were not its exact limits abundantly plain, even without the words which she added a moment later?
"God will forgive me if I am driven to it--if I choose the easier way of honour; for honour, sir," she added, clearly for his benefit, "is ever the easier way, believe me."
"I know," he replied contritely. "I would to God I had followed it."
He paused there, as if hoping that his expression of penitence might evoke some answer from her, might spur her to vouchsafe him some word of forgiveness. Seeing that she continued, mute and absorbed, he sighed heavily, and turned to other matters.
"Here you will find all that you can require," he said. "Should you lack aught you have but to beat your hands together, one or the other of my slaves will come to you. If you address them in French they will understand you. I would I could have brought a woman to minister to you, but that was impossible, as you'll perceive." He stepped to the entrance.
"You are leaving me?" she questioned him in sudden alarm.
"Naturally. But be sure that I shall be very near at hand. And meanwhile be no less sure that you have no cause for immediate fear. At least, matters are no worse than when you were in the pannier. Indeed, much better, for some measure of ease and comfort is now possible to you. So be of good heart; eat and rest. God guard you! I shall return soon after sunrise."
Outside on the poop-deck he found Asad alone now with Marzak under the awning. Night had fallen, the great crescent lanterns on the stern rail were alight and cast a lurid glow along the vessel's length, picking out the shadowy forms and gleaming faintly on the naked backs of the slaves in their serried ranks along the benches, many of them bowed already in attitudes of uneasy slumber. Another lantern swung from the mainmast, and yet another from the poop-rail for the Basha's convenience. Overhead the clustering stars glittered in a cloudless sky of deepest purple. The wind had fallen entirely, and the world was wrapped in stillness broken only by the faint rustling break of waves upon the beach at the cove's end.
Sakr-el-Bahr crossed to Asad's side, and begged for a word alone with him.
"I am alone," said the Basha curtly.
"Marzak is nothing, then," said Sakr-el-Bahr. "I have long suspected it."
Marzak showed his teeth and growled inarticulately, whilst the Basha, taken aback by the ease reflected in the captain's careless, mocking words, could but quote a line of the Koran with which Fenzileh of late had often nauseated him.
"A man's son is the partner of his soul. I have no secrets from Marzak. Speak, then, before him, or else be silent and depart."
"He may be the partner of thy soul, Asad," replied the corsair with his bold mockery, "but I give thanks to Allah he is not the partner of mine. And what I have to say in some sense concerns my soul."
"I thank thee," cut in Marzak, "for the justice of thy words. To be the partner of thy soul were to be an infidel unbelieving dog."
"Thy tongue, O Marzak, is like thine archery,"