Devil's Daughter (4 page)

“I would prefer a foil,” Arabella said. “I could skewer him easily.”

“Lord,” Adam said, ready to smack her. “I pity the man who has the taming of you.”

“Taming? And what of the poor woman who must bear with your ridiculous whims?”

“Now, lassie,” Scargill said, waving his pipe at her, “ye must at least make men think they are getting their way.”

“Men,” Arabella said, “should all be lined up and shot.”

“Men, my dear sister, also have their uses, which you will learn if you ever decide to grow up and be a woman.”

Eversley’s face flashed in Arabella’s mind, and she flushed. “I don’t want men, or their uses,” she said.

“I think, Scargill,” Adam said, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, “that this time I’ve had the last word.”

“Then ye’d best take yerself off now, lad, afore yer sister finds her tongue.” He banged his pipe against his palm, chuckled, and disappeared into the gardens.

A
lessandro di Ferrari, known in Algiers as Kamal El-Kader, Bey of Oran, stood in the front courtyard of his palace, resting his bronzed hands on the mosaic tile of the garden wall. He raised his eyes from the formidable fortress below him to its sister that straddled the sloping hill across the valley. Together, with their guns trained upon the harbor or Oran, they were a warning to Europe and a promise of protection to the ships nestled in the harbor below. At least a dozen
xebecs,
the deadly swift three-masted ships favored by the corsairs, were moored there, and a heavy Spanish trading vessel, its captain come to arrange tribute. The drill commands of Kamal’s Turkish troops, over five hundred strong, floated up to him. It was a fine day, the cloudless blue sky overhead mirrored in the smooth surface of the Mediterranean.

A warm breeze ruffled his wheat-colored hair and dried the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. He heard the soft tinkling sound of bells, and a smile flitted across his tanned face. They reminded him of Elena, a new concubine to his harem, a gift from the Dey of Algiers. He remembered her lying soft and languid in his arms, her silken ebony hair flowing over
his chest. When he had learned she was captured as a child by
rais
Hamidu in a raid on the coast of Italy, he asked her if she would like to return to her home. She had opened her dark chocolate eyes in astonishment, and when she realized he was serious, she had burst into tears. She had little memory of Italy, and even less of her parents. She was a sweet child, he thought, but like the others in his harem, she was unlettered and ignorant, save in the art of pleasing him.

Kamal frowned at his uncharitable thought and turned to rest his back and stretch his tense muscles. The death of his half-brother Hamil was still raw in his mind, and he was tired, having just returned the evening before from Algiers, where he had served as the dey’s
wakil al-kharidj,
or foreign-affairs minister. Because he had lived for many years in Europe and spoke three of their languages, it was he who dealt with European councils. They would begin with expressions of surprise that he, a Muslim, spoke their language, without a Jewish interpreter, and then the usual honeyed complaints about the pirating Algerian
rais,
the sea captains. He answered in phrases as smooth as their own, knowing full well that the privateering would not be halted, not until the Europeans opened their ports to the Barbary trade. Perhaps not even then, he amended to himself. It was a way of life to the
rais,
and it brought too many men, the dey included, substantial wealth. His people were raised to accept and pass on traditions, and they would not easily embrace abandoning this one. It troubled him, for he understood the Europeans as well. They would soon be forced to war with Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, indeed the whole world into which he was born.
His Turkish blood rebelled at the thought, yet he knew that the western powers could not for much longer abide the Barbary corsairs, not in the modern world.

He had listened to the foreign councils, and directed them as always to the
khaznadar,
the dey’s treasurer, a wily old man, who, if they didn’t pay the tribute the dey demanded, would merely smile, noting those who refused.

As his half-brother Hamil had before him, Kamal dealt more openly with private merchants such as the Italians, who could not afford the protection of a navy. They understood each other, and their business always ended with a banquet, and music, and nightly gifts of slave girls to warm their beds. The wealthy merchants knew that their tribute would buy their ships safety in the Mediterranean, safety even from the Tunisian privateers, for their sovereign, a bey just as was Kamal, would take his share of the tribute.

Kamal’s thoughts turned again to his half-brother Hamil, who had been more like a father to him than had Khar El-Din. It was Hamil who had helped his own mother, a former Genoese contessa, to convince Khar El-Din to have him educated in France and Italy. To help him understand the foreign devils, Hamil had said. And it was Hamil’s death in a storm off Sardinia that had brought him back to rule his people. Hamil’s first wife, Lella, was swollen with Hamil’s child, and Kamal intended that the child would never forget his father had been a great and powerful ruler, a man of courage and strength.

“Highness.”

He turned at the soft voice of Hassan Aga, his minister. “Is it time?” he asked.

“Soon, highness. Today you have but four judgments to render.” Hassan paused a moment, negligently smoothing his white wool sleeve. “One of the men, a wealthy spice merchant, wishes to pay you his respects, in the form of
piastres.
”

“Was the man subtle in his bribery, Hassan?”

“Not at all, highness.”

“You will point him out to me so that I may look upon the man who would seek to buy justice.”

“Yes, highness.” Hassan, a smile on his leathered face, started to turn. His eyes shadowed a moment as he said, “Your esteemed mother wishes to speak to you, highness.” He bowed and left Kamal to prepare for his entrance into the large formal chamber reserved for greeting visitors to the Bey.

Before Kamal turned to his mother, he straightened his full-sleeved shirt and his leather vest, and adjusted his wide, soft red leather belt.

“Mother,” he greeted her.

“Yes, my son.”

He dutifully bestowed a kiss upon her upturned cheek, and switched easily to Italian. “You are well?”

“Ah yes,” she said. “I heard that fool Hassan tell you of the merchant’s offered bribe.”

“Hassan a fool?”

His voice was carefully neutral. He had learned quickly upon his return to Oran that his mother was jealous of anyone who could influence him. Her possessiveness surprised him, for she knew him as little as he did her.

Giovanna Giusti, formerly of Genoa, now the mother of Oran’s Bey, shrugged her slender shoulders. “He could simply have accepted the bribe and filled your
coffers, my son. There was no need for you to know, and if your judgment had gone against the merchant, he could have said nothing. He is beneath your notice, or should be.”

“There is no justice in that, madam,” Kamal said. “If I did not render honest judgments, where would the people go?”

Giovanna shrugged again, impatiently. “Does it matter so much to you?”

Kamal found himself thinking like a Muslim for a moment, believing that he could not expect a woman to have any notion of honor or duty. He studied her silently. She was still a remarkably fine-looking woman, still possessed of much of the exquisite beauty that had captured his father’s roving eyes so long ago. She was slight, reaching only his shoulder, and as slender as a girl. Her hair was inky black—dyed, he suspected—with no trace of gray. But despite the care she took, there were lines on her face, bitter lines that deepened when she spoke of anything or anyone Muslim. He had given her a measure of power when he became Bey of Oran, power at least over the women, until he discovered she had placed Hamil’s widow, Lella, in a small, airless chamber fit only for a slave. When he had asked her why she had done it, she had lifted her narrow black brows in astonishment. “Lella is nothing, my son. She deserves to be sold, indeed, I think it would be best. It should be done before her belly swells.”

“By God, Mother the woman carries Hamil’s child. Her son will be my nephew, and my heir until I take a wife and breed my own son.”

“Your heir.”

He had realized suddenly that she considered Lella and her unborn child a threat. To her or to him? he had wondered, staring at her. “Yes, my heir,” he had told her. “Nothing will happen to Lella, Mother. Nothing. She and her unborn child are under my protection. Do you understand?”

Her face had smoothed out, as if by magic, into submissiveness. “Of course, my son. Forgive me. I will see that Lella is housed as befits her station. I am only concerned that you, Alessandro, be given what is due you.”

“Is there something you wanted, Mother?” he asked her now, a hint of impatience in his voice. “I haven’t much time. Hassan awaits me.”

Her dark eyes studied him before she lowered her head before him and murmured in a soft voice, “Perhaps later we can speak again, Alessandro.”

“Yes,” he said. He watched her pull her veil back over her face and walk gracefully toward the women’s quarters.

The ceremony that attended the Bey when he rendered judgments to his people had been nearly the same for over two hundred years. Kamal strode into the large sunlit chamber, its only furnishings his high-backed chair set upon a dais and a narrow table where his scribe sat, taking notes of the proceedings. He was flanked by Hassan Aga and a half-dozen of his Turkish soldiers, more for show than for protection. Their faces were expressionless, and they wore flamboyant red-and-white uniforms and highly polished scimitars fastened at their waists.

Kamal turned to face the afternoon’s supplicants,
and sat stiffly in the heavily ornate chair, brought from Spain by his father, Khar El-Din. He nodded to his minister, Hassan, who began to recount the first case, that of the spice merchant Hajj Ahmad, a fat man of middle years, the man who had wished to bribe Kamal. When Hassan gravely told the merchant to begin, Hajj Ahmad moved to speak before Kamal, his hands folded before him. His beard was liberally threaded with white and his nose was reddened from too many years of good spirits. His voice, somewhat to Kamal’s surprise, was soft and cultured. Kamal studied him carefully as he spoke.

“This man, highness,” Hajj Ahmad said with immense dignity, turning slightly to point to a slight, swarthy man older than he, “cheated me of payment. I had spices delivered to his store, and he refused to honor the terms of our agreement.”

Kamal looked intently into the man’s eyes, as his half-brother, Hamil, and his father, Khar El-Din, had taught him.
Unless a man is the greatest scoundrel on earth, you will see the way to justice in his eyes.

“Why, Hajj Ahmad,” Kamal asked politely, “did you allow the delivery of the spices if the man did not pay you?”

“One of my sons arranged it, highness. He returned to me with the news”—he nearly spat on the other man—“that this insect refused to pay.”

The shopkeeper took his turn. “I paid, highness, but the son of Hajj Ahmad refused to give me a receipt for my payment.”

“A lie, highness,” Hajj shouted.

Kamal raised his hand for quiet. He gazed closely at
both men, then turned to speak softly to Hassan, who stood beside his chair.

He said nothing more, and Hassan directed the two men to wait in the antechamber. Kamal rendered his judgments on two other cases, both involving matters of personal status, and thus under the Our’anic law. He then turned to Hassan and nodded to him.

A sloe-eyed young man, with the beginnings of a paunch as noble as his sire’s, strode into the hall of justice with Hajj Ahmad. Kamal turned to Hajj Ahmad. “This is the son you sent to deliver the spices to the shopkeeper?”

“Yes, highness.”

Kamal looked closely at the young man and smiled. “Tell us what happened,” he said.

The young man glanced briefly toward his father, and told the same story that Hajj Ahmad had recounted, embellishing upon it at the seemingly sympathetic smile from the Bey.

Kamal said quietly when he had finished, “And you serve your father so well that you would leave his goods with another, without payment?”

“The shopkeeper said he could not pay me, highness. He said he would send payment the next day to my father, but he did not.”

Kamal stared down at the huge emerald ring upon his third finger. “Hassan,” he said at last, “the bastinado for the son.”

“Highness,” Hajj shrieked. “He is my son. He is of my flesh. All his life he has served me faithfully.”

“Your son has stolen from you, Hajj Ahmad. If under the bastinado he does not admit where he has hidden the shopkeeper’s payment, I will still consider
that justice has been rendered. It appears that you are not a good judge of men. You misjudged your son and you have misjudged me. Do not again attempt to bribe me.”

Hassan clapped his hands, and two of the Turkish soldiers, their scimitars glittering silver at their sides, dragged the young man away. “Do not let them beat the fool to death,” Kamal said to Hassan. “He is a coward. When he tells his father what he has done with the money, release him. Hajj Ahmad will treat him then as he should be treated, I would wager.”

When Kamal had finished with the last case, a dispute over a young bride’s dowry, Hassan’s wizened face crinkled into a smile of pride. “I feared, highness,” he said softly, “that a man who has spent so many years away from us would not see truth among us as would one born to it.”

Kamal laughed. “But you still pray that I will grow wiser as the years pass, do you not, Hassan?”

“Yes, highness. It is inevitable.” Hassan paused a moment as a slave handed Kamal a glass of fruit juice. “There is another matter, highness,” he said softly.

Kamal cocked his head in question, dismissing the slave with a wave of his hand.

“The reply you made to the English earl some weeks ago, highness, the Earl of Clare.”

“The missing ships. I told him that I knew nothing of it, Hassan, as you know. You have since discovered something?”

“Yes, highness. One of our captains, Bajor, was responsible.”