Page 15 of Silver Angel

They would assume she had run away. Aunt Ellen would have come to Dover, and after being told what they had planned for Chantelle, she would assume she had run away, too. But she would also assume that Chantelle would contact her at the soonest opportunity, and she would wait in vain, wondering, and then worrying when time passed and she had no word. And no one would ever know what had really happened to Chantelle. She had simply disappeared from England without a trace.

There had been only one bad storm that delayed the ship’s progress for several days. Chantelle hoped for more, but the weather held fine, too fine, the heat increasing in the small cabin soon after they had slipped through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar to enter the Mediterranean Sea. The very next day, she was witness to the corsairs in action.

It came as a shock when the ship began readying for attack, and Hakeem rushed in to explain what was happening. They had passed other ships in the Atlantic without incident, so Chantelle had assumed they weren’t after any more prizes on this voyage. Wrong. They simply did their attacking in familiar waters.

“You need not worry,lalla. It is doubtful we will need to use the ship’s guns. It is nearly evening, so we can take the merchantman by surprise, approaching down-sun of her so it will be difficult for her to identify us. Theraishas already raised identical colors, and we have a man who speaks her tongue to hail her and lull her. We will board her before she is aware she is in danger.”

Chantelle wasn’t worried. But she was excited. This was a possibility she hadn’t counted on—hope from an unexpected quarter. If the corsairs’ ship failed in its attack, if it should be captured instead, she would be saved.

She began to pray the minute Hakeem left her, and continued for the next half hour. That was all it took. The noise was horrible, the shouts and screams, the clanging of scimitars on shields, but she was to learn it was only the corsairs who made the racket, which was part of their strategy to terrify their victims. And it worked. The Neapolitan merchantman was easy prey, the crew so taken by surprise that there was little bloodshed. All were made prisoners and the other vessel torched, since the corsairs didn’t have enough men to spare as a crew for the prize.

For three days after, Chantelle fell into a depression that nothing could shake, thinking of the men now chained in the hold who, like her, would be sold. And like her fate, what would happen to them was unknown. Hakeem had been willing to enlighten her, but not after she was so appalled to hear the prisoners would be led from the ship near naked and in chains. He refused to continue, assuring her only that her arrival in Barikah would be very different.

It might be different, but it was no less terrifying, as she found out a short twelve days after the merchantman was captured. Seen through the one small porthole her cabin boasted, Barikah glistened on the North African coast, the Barbary Coast, as the long strip extending from Morocco to Egypt was called. It was a white jewel shimmering in the hot midday sun. Flat-roofed, whitewashed houses crowded together, rising one above the next on steep hills, flanked on both sides by the verdant green of pastures and fields, with the brilliant blue waters of the harbor below, the cloudless azure sky above. Seen from afar, the Eastern flavor stood out starkly in the green-tiled cupolas of huge domed mosques towering above the houses, each with four minarets rising toward the sky like pointed needles. Cone-topped watchtowers stood out, too. So did a large building sitting atop the tallest hill and surrounded by thick walls that could only be the palace of the Dey.

Closer to the harbor were other large buildings seen just above the high walls that surrounded Barikah: warehouses for the cargoes from the commercial ships of many different nations that crowded the harbor, barracks for the soldiers who manned the walls where twenty batteries protected the bay with more than a thousand cannon, bagnios which housed the huge work force of slaves.

There was also the spire of a Christian church, but Chantelle unfortunately didn’t notice this. If she had, she might have lost some of the trepidation now filling her violet eyes, for Hakeem had not bothered to tell her the Dey of Barikah was tolerant of Christians, that many lived here who weren’t slaves, that there was a whole European community in the city. A Christian church was a sign of sanctuary, a haven that would be easy to find when she escaped, whereas the English consulate would not be as easy to locate. But she didn’t see it, and she didn’t see the city for very long either, at least not all of it, once the ship came about to maneuver toward its berth.

Not long after, there was the sound of the male prisoners being led onto the deck after twelve horrid days spent in the hold. The moans, the clanking of chains, sent Chantelle rushing for her bed to cover her ears and stifle her sobs of fear in her pillows. How long before she, too, would be led from this temporary haven? Yes, the ship was now a haven compared with what awaited her ashore.

But time passed and no one came for her. Her tears dried. Her fears gave way to emotional exhaustion. She was almost ready to accept anything just to get it over with so she could stop being constantly afraid.

When Hakeem did finally come to the cabin, it was nearing evening. He had a tray of food for her, and clothes draped over one arm.

Chantelle took one look at the food and thought she would throw up, her stomach was so in knots. “Take it away.”

“You will not be leaving the ship until late tonight, when the city is quiet. In the meantime you must eat,lalla.”

“I’d hate to tell you what you can do with that food, Hakeem.”

He smiled at her surly tone, but it was a sad smile. Her puffy eyes gave evidence of her misery. Captives weren’t to be pitied. They were merchandise, nothing more, though this one was much more valuable than most. And yet he did pity her. She was such a contradiction with her eyes spitting defiance at him while her mouth quivered with a touching vulnerability.

Hakeem had unfortunately fallen a little bit in love with her, though he didn’t know it. But there was nothing he could do about the strange feelings she stirred in him. There was nothing he could do for her either. He wouldn’t even be the one to take her ashore, and once she left the ship, he would never see her again.

What she needed was courage so that she wouldn’t get into trouble from her sharp tongue, which seemed to be her natural response to fear, and it was a dangerous response. A Muslim admired courage, but not insults; spirit, but not insolence. And Hamid Sharif, to whom she would be taken tonight, was not a man known for his understanding or patience.

“Did you not tell me you were gently bred?” Hakeem asked her, setting the tray of food down on a little stool, which thusly turned the tray into an adequate low table. “An heiress? The daughter of an English nobleman?”

“Bravo,” Chantelle retorted. “Your memory does you proud.”

“I cannot say the same about your shrewishness,lalla.” He heard her affronted gasp but went on relentlessly. “If you had not told me these things about yourself, I would think you were a peasant. Peasants have no more sense than to bite at the hand that holds their life. A noble is wiser, having the sense to know when to give up the fight without losing one’s pride.”

“Don’t you dare tell me how to act when you can’t possibly know how I feel!”

“No, I cannot know,” he agreed. “I can only tell you that you have value, and so will be treated well and with care. But when a slave loses value, it is nothing to have him beaten, sold, or killed. That is never likely to happen to you, because your value is not in a strong back or a special skill, but in your comeliness. Yet undesirable traits will not be tolerated, and there are many punishments that can be inflicted without marring your value.”

“Why do you tell me this?” she asked resentfully.

“So that you do not make the mistake of appearing less than you are, and therefore lower your value. You are a lady, one with pride and intelligence. It is your right to expect to be treated as such, and so you will be, if this is how you act. A certain amount of fear is only natural. But how you deal with that fear is the question. Do you show it, holding yourself up to ridicule and abuse, or do you conceal it behind a bearing suitable to your previous class and station?”

“I still don’t see—”

“Think, woman!” he snapped impatiently. “How you are perceived is how you will be treated. A village wench, no matter how comely, is known to be accustomed to hardship, and so need not be treated with the greatest care. Why subject yourself to that needlessly?”

“Why would I? I am who I say I am.”

“Anyone can say they are a lady and yet belie the point with their behavior. I know that when you insult me, you do not do it to hurt me, but to hide your own fear. But I have known you long enough to have discovered this truth. Hamid Sharif will not know you long enough to draw this same conclusion.Nowdo you understand,lalla?”