Barbary Slave by Gardner Fox - Chapter 04

1955 Genre: Historical Fiction / Swashbuckling Pirates

SOLD INTO SLAVERY! It was unthinkable that innocent Eve Doremus of Boston would be forced to parade her naked beauty in a Barbary Coast slave mart. Or that the blond giant who guarded the Sultan's female chattels would be a U.S. Marine lieutenant. Yet anything was possible in exotic, violent, 19th Century Tripoli.

Amid the love-making, intrigues and tortures of the Pasha's pagan court, Eve and her marine—Stephen Fletcher—fell in love. But their romance was destined to face every temptation and peril as they loved and battled their way to freedom.

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CHAPTER 4

Yussuf Caramanli reined in his roan mare to glance upward at the darkening sky. His sailor's eye recognized that cloud for a thunderhead. A torrential rain would be sweeping across Fezzan northward in a little while. Any man who found himself out in that downpour would be drenched to the skin. Yussuf Caramanli could put up with discomfort when the need arose, but his business at Sabratha could await a more propitious hour.

Yussuf pasha lifted his right arm. The little column of corsair captains and janissary agas that formed his guard of honor swung their barbs in rhythm to his cry.

“No need to ride on. The morrow is as good as today to look at raw recruits and newly fitted ships.”

With silver ring-bits jingling at headstalls and reins, they galloped back along the Tunis road toward Tripoli. They went past a date plantation and a score of Berber traders scurrying into ancient ruins for shelter. A Bedouin chieftain in flowing bournous, his long Arabic rifle bouncing wildly on his back, headed away from them on a swift-racing camel.

They passed through the desert gate and onto the Street of Fig Merchants. They rode more easily now, cantering by the great baths, their walls limed white, towering above little zinnia gardens.

Yussuf pasha let himself sink back against the high cantle of his Arabian saddle. The ride had been good for him. It Seemed to put new life in his veins. He thought of Marlani Chamiprak and smiled. He had ignored his fiery bash-kedin for too long a time. When they trotted into the castle courtyard, he threw the reins to a Tirsa boy and dismounted. As he strode toward the castle, his tongue came out to caress his thin lips. There was no better time for making love than during a tropical cloudburst, with the rain lashing at the walls and the humidity of the day putting a sensual fever into a man's body.

He would send a slave to the harem, to inform Marlani that he was home. By the time he had bathed and donned perfumed garments, she would be with him. Yussuf Caramanli paused to savor the sea air with lifting lungs. Then he swung toward the closed doors of the selamlik.

His fingers-closed on the ornate bronze circles that were the door handles, and pulled. The door swung inward.

On the cushions of the wide, low divan, were Marlani Chamiprak and the nasrany guardsman, Stephen Fletcher.

The five men crept through the deserted streets of Tripoli like dark wraiths, moving only in the shadows of the garden walls that flanked the cobbled avenues. The approaching storm was blackening the afternoon, its gloomy pall cloaking the furtive swiftness with which they moved.

Yuvaz the Armless ran before them, lean body swaying in an unbalanced run. His moment of triumph was coming. Soon now, Yussuf Caramanli would die beneath the bared steel of these picked assassins who ran in single file behind him, hidden in their thick woolen barracans. Yuvaz quickened his pace. Yussuf pasha would take his corsair brig, the Burak, out to sea before long. He and his men must strike now, while the Burak was still without her sails, while Yussuf was so interested in his coming sea voyage that he would be an easy victim.

He had planned too long to fail now. He had been careful to select the proper time, and the proper men. He warfed no latecomers to the streets of Tripoli, no man come into power since Yussuf pasha wore the three horse-hairs in his turban. He wanted, and chose, men who had known Yussuf's brother, the deposed Hamet, and who longed for his return. First, he had to be sure of their loyalty to Hamet. Then he made sure that they were strong, and hard of heart and muscle so they might bare their scimitars to do murder.

When he was sure of his men, he sidled up to them, under the mellow glow of brass ceiling lamps in the coffeehouses, or sat himself beside them on thick satin cushions as they stared avidly at naked dancing girls. His voice would whisper to them, reminding them of the days when Hamet sat where Yussuf ruled, suggesting the obvious advantages they might claim were they to approach Hamet, who hid now in Cairo, with the pashaship of Tripoli in their hands as an offering. Startled faces smoothed out quickly. Narrowed eyes surveyed the coffeehouse or trattoria, that none might suspect why Yuvaz the Armless sat here whispering so animatedly with such corsairs as Hajji reis or kaputan Ghazi ibn Said. It took time, but no one in the palace ever paid any attention to Yuvaz. What harm was there in a man without arms? And so his comings and his goings went unseen. In the shops and souks, they thought him only a beggar.

This was the time for murder, this day when the white anvil head of the thundercloud was racing overhead and big raindrops were soon to come splashing down into the cobbled streets. Yussuf pasha had ridden out to Sabratha this morning. Now he had come back, to take his castle by surprise. Raindrops began to pelt down on the white domes and minaret of the Caramanli mosque opposite the palace as Yuvaz brought his killers of the Street of Arcades and into the long narrow corridor leading to the inner courtyard. It was in just such a dark, narrow passageway that the original Caramanli had gained his power in Tripoli by murdering the officers of the Turkish garrison, almost a hundred years ago. Now, as then, men on their way to slay carried their weapons naked in their hands.

“Hé!” snorted Yuvaz in the darkness of the corridor. “Yussuf did not take me by surprise, coming back so suddenly to his castle. I had planned to bring you men here, at this time, to hide you until he returned at night. This way is even better! His own palace guards will not know he is home, and will not be alert to danger!”

As the rain pelted down in growing fury, they ran across the courtyard, past the flowering palms and the goldfish pool with its ornate dolphin fountain. Yuvaz jerked his chin like a finger at the stone stairway.

“Up there,” he howled. “The first door to your right in the wall, after you enter the gallery. A double door of red cedar-wood, with green bronze hinges shaped like the neck of a swan. Stab home for Hamet!”

For a moment he watched them leaping up the outer stair, then whirled and dove for the shelter of an arched portico as the rain deluged down in thick gray sheets.

The four assassins entered the gallery corridor from the outer stairway door on silent feet. They were lean men, wrapped to their glowing, intense eyes in thick gray barracans. Each man held a curving scimitar in his right hand. Their chests lifted and fell to the excitement that churned in them. Yuvaz had briefed them well on their run through the storm-clouded streets of Tripoli. At this time of day, when Yussuf Caramanli was not in the selamlik—and the castello thought him well on the road to Zliten at the moment—there would be only one guard along the corridor. Now that Yussuf had returned home so unexpectedly, it would take time to summon other guards from their varied duties. During that interval, they must strike and strike fast. They knew, where to find Yussuf—after these journeys he went to his private boudoir in the seramlik, to be welcomed back by his favorite wife with sweetmeats and coffee; and, if he were feeling especially healthy, with caresses.

The four assassins waited in the recess of a gallery door. They could hear the lone guard approaching. When he passed their hiding place, they would spring out at him with cold steel. Then they would run to bring the same sort of death to the pasha of Tripoli.

Yussuf Caramanli stood frozen in the doorway, between the opened red cedar-wood doors. His eyes bulged, and his mouth opened and closed, soundlessly.

“Allah l'allah!” moaned Marlani Chamiprak, trying to rise and cover her nakedness.

Fletcher cursed softly and rolled from the woman, knowing that he was as good as a dead man, now. Then he realized that the pasha of Tripoli was not seeing them, though he seemed to be staring right at them. Yussuf Caramanli was rooted to the tiled floor of the doorway by livid feat. The harsh outcry of a man in his death throes was ringing up and down the corridor. An instant later, they heard the sudden pound of running feet.

Every pasha dreads assassination. It is the constant companion of the Moslem ruler. Every sultan, bey or pasha since the days of Mehmed Fatih, who established Turkish power at Constantinople when he took that great city on the Bosphorus two hundred and fifty years before, has walked in terror of cold steel in his back, or of a pistol fired into his face. It is the reason for the palace guards and the reason why eunuchs stand with their backs to harem doors.

The sudden rush of slippered feet over the gallery tiles, the scrape of scimitar being pulled from its scabbard, the hoarse breathing of men not used to murder and consequently almost as frightened by their daring as he was himself—Yussuf Caramanli knew what these sounds meant.

He gave a strangled cry and fell inward, rolling along the tiles. “Hamet's men,” he babbled. “I should have killed him! I should never have let him live!”

The five captains that Yuvaz the Armless had taken six months to find came in the wide doorway with steel in their hands. Except for a naked woman and a nasrany guard, only the pasha of Tripoli was in the room. One of their number turned back at the doors to bolt them tight.

Yussuf Caramanli screamed thickly as he saw the four sea kaputans coming at him.

So intent were they on their task that they did not notice the big blond nasrany snatch up his own scimitar where it lay on a red velvet cushion near the low, round divan. The nasrany ran with bare feet on the tiles, making no sound. He went over the moaning Yussuf pasha in a leap that made him materialize before their eyes out of thin air. Fletcher swung his scimitar in a cleaving cut that no blade ever made could have withstood. His edge caught one of the four at the throat and cut through that to the breastbone. Then he was moving away, scimitar reaching out to engage the blades that faced him. He danced as he fought, his naked feet shifting his body from defense to attack. His curving blade ran into a belly and stood out past the spine. Only two scimitars faced him now. Fletcher yanked his steel free of the dead body that weighted it down, and ducked under a swinging blade.

He fought savagely, knowing the man at the door was turning and coming at him. Steel blades clanged harshly as they met. They scraped, where a blade warded off a molinello in tierce, with a nerve-shattering screech.

The lamplight caught at Fletcher's blued steel as he swung it high, then low. He fought as he had learned to fight with the cavalry sabers his father owned. During the American Revolution, his father had ridden with Francis Marion in his sweeps across the South. What his father knew of saber fighting, which was considerable, he had passed on to his son. Stephen Fletcher blessed his parent more than once this afternoon, as he stamped across the tile-work of the selamlik loor, his Damascus blade a living thing in his hand.

Slowly he backed before the simultaneous attack of those three scimitars. When they were near the divan, where Marlani Chamiprak knelt frozen and staring with terror, Fletcher went to the attack. He rushed his opponents, forcing them into the spilled cushions around the divan.

One man lost his balance in the cushions and fell, arms waving wildly. Fletcher came at him with bloody blade. He sent the edge across the man's middle in a cut that went through flesh without obstacles. The man was dead before his back touched the floor tiles.

“Your freedom, nasrany,” croaked Yussuf pasha. “Your freedom if you kill them! No! Take one of them alive! I want, one of then alive!”

Fletcher caught the voice but made no sense of the words, for steel was ringing continually in his ears now. The assassins sensed that they stood before a blade that was more than a match for their own steel, and in their anxiety, they grew desperate. And desperate men make mistakes.

One of the killers skidded on a smear of blood. As he fell, Fletcher was there before him, stabbing downward into his chest. The man coughed once, bloodily, and fell straight down, to lie with legs twitching in his death throes.

The last man tried to bring success from certain death. He whirled on a heel and ran for the unarmed Yussuf Caramanli.

Even as the pasha of Tripoli screamed his fear, Fletcher caught the man not three feet from his victim. His red scimitar swung viciously, cutting through bone and gristle between neck and shoulder. The man cried out thickly as he fell.

There was a little silence in the room.

Stephen Fletcher looked down at the kneeling pasha, and told himself that this was the time to kill the man—now, before he recovered his habitual arrogance, before his hands could snatch up the power that his name gave him. Then he remembered Mustafa reis, and the fact that a living Yussuf Caramanli was his best protection against the fanatical Barbary captain. Besides, he told himself wryly, I'm no murderer, and this man has made no attack on my life.

“Yussuf! Yussuf!” That was Marlani Chamiprak crying out her terror at last, running on bare legs toward her pasha, her silks tied hastily about her smooth warm skin. She lifted him to his feet. As her hands soothed him, her wide, frightened eyes asked a question of the big man with the yellow hair! What can we do? He caught us together on the divan cushions!

Fletcher said, "It's lucky the kedin saw these men, highness. Lucky too, that she found me, to warn me, so that we could come here and hide, waiting for them.”

Yussuf Caramanli discovered that, now that the danger to his person was past, his strength was flowing back into his muscles. His eyes went from the nasrany to his favorite wife. Vaguely, he remembered seeing them together on the divan when he threw open the cedar-wood doors. Almost immediately, or perhaps it was in the very same instant, he had heard the sounds of the assassins as they came for him.

His eyes narrowed. “You are dressed very lightly, Marlani. Those silk things hide nothing.”

There was hidden fire in Marlani Chamiprak. The nasrany had given her the clue she lacked, and so her chin lifted angrily. “Is this the thanks I get? I came swiftly from the women's quarters. Would you have had me think of modesty when your life was threatened?”

Yussuf pasha put a trembling hand to his brow. His mind still reeled in reaction to the fear that had flooded his body. A brave man on the heaving deck of his flagship, he dissolved in terror at the prospect of being attacked, unarmed by a stealthy assassin.

“No, no. Forgive my words! I am all distraught.” The woman soothed him, gesturing Fletcher to assist her as she brought the pasha to the divan. “I saw them from the grilled window of my apartment, creeping across the courtyard only seconds before you returned.”

The grin on Fletcher's face encouraged her lie. Marlani Chamiprak beat her fist against her bosom, grimacing dramatically. "Bi'llah! What could I do, a lone woman? These men would hide in the selamlik and slay you. I ran and found the nasrany.”

There was a flaw in her argument that Fletcher hastened to correct. He said swiftly, “From the wall, I saw you coming along the Street of Arcades. I knew there was no time to summon guards. Your return would coincide almost exactly with the arrival of the killers in the selamlik. The kedin and I arrived here only a moment before you opened the doors. We were going to hide, so that I might surprise the killers, but there was no time.”

Yussuf pasha nodded silently. His voice trembled with emotion. “Allah blessed the day. I refused to sell you to Mustafa reis, nasrany. For this thing you have done, I give you freedom.”

Fletcher remembered the Philadelphia's men that he had met at the tavern of Nicolo Gritti. He thought also of Eve Doremus, who would be left alone if he took advantage of this offer.

There was no acting blood in Stephen Fletcher, but he bowed his head and bent his knee as humbly as any kalfa. “I thank the pasha, but I have no desire for freedom. My people would send me back to a ship, to fight against you, perhaps. Besides, there are certain advantages I have here that I could never hope for in America.”

Yussuf Caramanli sat up, staring. “Eh? What's this? You refuse freedom?”

“I've known only kindness here, since you bought me,” Fletcher said, his head still lowered.

“He means the woman you gave him,” Marlani Chamiprak explained hastily. Her blood still pounded thickly in her veins. It had been a near thing, back there. If it had not been for those assassins, and the American's quick wit, the nasrany and she would be deep in some damp, black dungeon, waiting for death and praying it would be swift.

Ah, well. To love is to take chances. There would be other days, when no rainstorm would bring Yussuf back from the duties that took him far from Tripoli. If this Americano remained at the castle, she would find a way to bring him to her side many times in the near future.

“But how can I reward you?" asked the pasha in his puzzlement.

Marlani Chamiprak leaned toward her lord and master. With her eyes fixed on Fletcher, she murmured, “Free him, but make him commander of the palace guards!”

The commander of the palace guards was second only to the pasha himself in this stone fortress. He came and went, accountable to no man or woman but Yussuf Caramanli.

“Bayazid is commander now,” protested Yussuf.

“Where was Bayazid when you had need of him and his sword? Answer me that Bayazid grows fat with loafing!” Marlani hissed in his ear.

The pasha admitted grudgingly, “He grows fat, without doubt.”

“A sea voyage against the infidel would work some of that fat off,” urged the bash-kedin, smiling above Yussuf's head at Fletcher. “Take him with you when your fleet prepares to sail! Put the Americano in his place!

Mashallah! With Yussuf off on a sea voyage, and this blond Americano made commander of the guard, her days and nights would be ecstatic things. A little tremor slid down her supple back as Marlani Chamiprak closed her eyes to her own imaginings.

“Yes,” said Yussuf pasha thoughtfully. “That would be a good idea. I would be able to give Bayazid command of a ship, so as not to offend his pride, and at the same time I would honor the nasrany who saved my life. It shall be done!”

Yussuf Caramanli lifted his head and looked at his favorite wife and at the blond nasrany, his dark face giving no hint of suspicion. Uneasily, Fletcher wondered if the pasha of Tripoli was as naive as he often seemed or if the man were a better actor than either he or Marlani Chamiprak.