The Companion (15 page)

Fedeyah sat on the outcropping and grunted for him to kneel in the sand at his feet. The Arab sighted along his brass sextant and took a very fine watch from underneath his burnoose. He grunted and sighted again to check himself. Apparently satisfied, he wrapped the sextant in its embroidered cloth bag and eased a basket lined with leather from its strap about his neck. Ahhh, water. Ian could smell it as Fedeyah opened the basket and lifted it to his bearded chin. Ian’s tongue was thick in his mouth. When Fedeyah had wiped his lips, he offered the basket to Ian
.

Ian took it with trembling hands and upended it over his mouth. The water, tasting of leather, flowed down his throat in sweet relief. He sputtered and gulped again
.

“Enough, slave,” Fedeyah said roughly, and pulled the basket away. “You are careless. Anyone would know you were born on an island surrounded by water.”

Ian wiped his mouth and licked his hand to get the last. “Yet you will wash me in it.”

Fedeyah shrugged. “She spends the water as she wishes.” He peered at Ian’s body. “You have lasted longer than any favorite in a hundred years. She savors you.”

“Why?” All he wanted was for her to drain him one night and let his suffering cease
.

“Because you care.” Fedeyah looked out over the caravan. “When her dominance is a torment, it gives her greater satisfaction. Some do not care, you know. Some grow to like it. Or they go mad and are past caring.” He turned his flat black eyes on Ian. “She says she can feel your will fluttering against her. She tries to break you. But she likes it that she cannot.”

Ian wondered that he could still flush with shame. “So the way to escape is to enjoy it?”

Fedeyah looked out across the desert to the caravan below. “Not even that will save you now. She has other plans for you. Still, your servitude will last but a single lifetime.”

Maybe he could get Fedeyah to do the job instead. “You are like her, Arab. I have seen you suck the blood from the slaves.” He let his tone hold insolence not tolerated in a slave
.

The Arab’s voice was hollow. “Would I was more like her.”

“She is stronger than you are?”

A strange look came over his face, as though he were far away, beyond Ian’s taunts. “Oh yes. She made me, after all. Soon she will be stronger yet.”

Ian tried to think of some other challenge that would anger the Arab. But something puzzled him. “Is she so much stronger that she can make you serve her?”

He looked slowly back at Ian, and his eyes were old. “I do not serve her as you do. The Moors had my manhood. No, she wanted a procurer, an arranger. Why find a mortal who would become useless in fifty years? So she made a permanent servant.”

“Why do you stay?” Ian asked softly. How could this man choose to serve pure evil?

“My bonds are stronger than yours, English. They are of my own making. Do you know what it is to love against your will, in spite of what she is, because of what she is, with a love that does not die, even over centuries?” His voice grew hoarse. “She takes an endless series of slaves to fill a need I will never quench.” He turned eyes now lit with twisted emotion. “Yet you come and go. I am always here. She needs me, too.”

“You are as evil as she is.” He expected the light in the eunuch’s eyes to glow red
.

Instead it died. “Yes,” he said. “May Allah forgive me.”

The keeper of slaves hurried as quickly up the hill as his great bulk would take him. “She calls for the slave, Fedeyah. He must be washed.”

Fedeyah rose and started down the hill. Ian staggered to his feet, yanked forward, dread filling him. His reprieve was ended. Fedeyah and the keeper took Ian to the barrel of water. The keeper dipped a rag in the precious liquid and scrubbed at Ian with the lye soap. It stung in his wounds. The rough handling opened some of the fresher cuts. But he was used to that. Fedeyah rummaged in a pack on one of the camels and came up with a leather bag attached to a very long wooden nipple, not unlike a water skin. Ian stared, uncomprehending, while Fedeyah calmly filled it with water
.

“Kneel!” the keeper barked. Fedeyah handed him the bag. “On all fours.”

Ian obeyed, his forehead creasing in premonition. He had not long to wait until his dread was made certain. The keeper spread his buttocks and inserted the wooden nipple, squeezing the cool water up into him. “Hold it,” he commanded, “or you will feel the lash.”

Ian scrunched his face in shame. What new humiliation was in store? Was he to be given to the keeper? He had seen the keeper at the other slaves, but never with one of Asharti’s chosen and never bothering with preparation. Fedeyah rummaged in the pack again and brought out two phalluses, one shaped like a man’s cock, made out of some kind of polished wood, and one of intricately carved stone that looked horribly inhuman
.

Ian stared at Fedeyah in horror. The Arab wore no expression. He simply turned, strode the few paces to the palanquin, and handed the two rods in through the silks. Breath rasped in Ian’s throat. Asharti had found a new way to break his spirit. He vowed to let her
.

Ian’s stomach clenched. Apparently he had not tried hard enough to let his spirit be broken. Use of the phalluses had become one of her favorite games with him. As he looked back, it was probably the fact that he hated what she did that made his will “flutter” against hers. His only comfort was that no one here knew his shame. Let her do what she would in Africa. She could kill them all for all he cared. He had escaped. Except for that part of her he carried inside. No one else need ever know what he had become in the desert.

He was not sure himself. He knew about drinking blood, of course, and the long life, from Fedeyah. And he had discovered the healing. He knew the sun burned him, but that seemed to be getting infinitesimally better. He used compulsion to get blood. But surely there was more.

That brought him back to the girl. Her scrolls might be able to tell him. He rose and let himself into the common cabin. Light showed under her door only. The bell outside struck softly. It was two in the morning. As he stood hesitating, the light blinked out. He could not accost her in her cabin this late. He would merely frighten her. And that he could not afford to do.

Beth nodded over her scroll and the careful transcription she was making. It was no good to continue. She rolled the scroll carefully and replaced it in her satchel, then doused her lamp and crawled into her cot. Now that she was in her bed, sleep fled.

There had been no more references she could make out either to Mr. Rufford’s condition or to Kivala. But she was determined to know more about her strange fellow passenger.
Why had his agitation disappeared? Why had he been in such distress about Callow? Why did Callow’s wounds echo Rufford’s own? He was so eager to reach Gibraltar. She had heard him ask the Captain repeatedly about it. Why? What was there for him? She had to know.

A bold plan began to take shape. He would go ashore in Gibraltar. She wanted to know what he did there. A British woman in a dress would attract too much attention. She smiled in the dark. She could fix that. She was about to do something that Lady Rangle would despise.

Eight

The convoy put in to the harbor at Gibraltar on the late-afternoon tide. Mrs. Pargutter had recovered miraculously and now stood with Beth and Jenny at the rail as the
Beltrane
found her place among the crowded shipping fleet rocking on the water in the translucent light.

“How long are we to have in port?” Mrs. Pargutter asked Beth. “I must see all the shops.” Her voice was eager, her plump cheeks pink.

“The Captain says we sail on tomorrow evening’s ebb. We stay to acquire some five new members of our convoy.” Beth hoped Mr. Rufford would have time to carry out whatever it was he was planning, for she meant to discover what that was.

Mrs. Pargutter gasped in dismay. “A single day? Well! I shall bespeak a room ashore tonight, for a prompt start in the morning.” She turned to Beth. “You will come with us, dear Miss Rochewell? Will it not be heaven to feel solid land beneath our feet?”

Beth gazed out at the immense Rock that rose above the little harbor town. The stark stone rising sharply into the sky loomed over the waterfront. Lush gardens by the shore lined a broad avenue Beth remembered as the Grand Parade. It
was filled to overflowing with a cross section of the world. She could pick out the red coats of the lobsters and the blue of naval officers of course, though not as many as during the war, before the Rock had been ceded back to Spain. Even from here she spied white turbans, the rich colors of Turks and Greeks, the pale blue robes of Tangier Coptic Christians, the black of Barbary Jews. Whitewashed walls, terracotta roof tiles, and bright shutters marched up the shoulders of the Rock. “I hope you are not disappointed of dress shops,” she said to Mrs. Pargutter. “This has always been a military town.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” Mrs. Pargutter tutted, her brassy curls shivering. “Wherever there are military men, you find the women who follow them and mantua makers aplenty. I am only sorry we are to be whisked away so cruelly.”

“Not a moment to be lost.” Beth smiled, quoting the naval phrase heard most often on any ship, even a Company Indiaman.

“Captain!” Mrs. Pargutter called, interrupting the Captain’s discussion of the state of the ship’s best bower anchor with his first mate. “How soon may we have a boat to go ashore?”

“Another glass.” The Captain frowned. “I will send my barge with you.”

Mrs. Pargutter turned to Beth. “Is he making me wait while he drinks?” she asked, outrage pulling down the corners of her mouth.

“No, no,” Beth soothed. “He means in half an hour. You have remarked that the sand runs in the glass, there by the bell, in half-hour increments? They toll their bell on the half hour.”

“The infernal bell!” Mrs. Pargutter exclaimed. “It has been giving me the headache for two weeks and more.”

Beth noted with satisfaction that the barge would be shipping across at sunset. True to her surmise, Mr. Rufford appeared just as the boat was launching, and ran down the side into the barge with a small valise.

“You, too, sleep ashore, sir?” Beth asked as the coxswain directed him to a seat facing her.

He glanced at her and carefully away. “One must take one’s opportunity as it presents.”

“Pull out, there!” the coxswain bellowed. The boat swung away from the side of the frigate and made for the quays, wending its way between the high walls of the moored ships.

“I do hope we may find lodging,” Mrs. Pargutter worried. She had burdened Jenny, sitting on her other side, with the huge valise she required for one night ashore.

“My father and I lodged at an inn called Fruit of the Vine on several trips into the Med,” Beth remarked. “It is most conveniently located, but quiet. We can try there first if you like.” She shot a glance to Mr. Rufford. She did not want to be looking all over town for where he had lodged. “Do you have a place bespoke, sir?”

“Not yet.” His answer was short, to discourage her.

“Single gentlemen prefer The Bells, I believe. The staff speaks English, and French as well as Spanish and Catalan.”

He raised his brows at her.

She refused to blush. “My father’s partner, Monsieur L’Bareaux, always stayed there.”

He said nothing. She could only hope that he would be found later at The Bells.

It was after midnight. Beth pulled the rough cloth of her jacket around her and huddled farther into the doorway. The breeze off the harbor carried a bite that said the warmth of autumn waned. Overhead moon and stars were obscured by clouds, and the air held the threat of rain. Rufford had chosen The Bells after all. The boy from whom she’d bought her clothing knew exactly where the English gentleman with the broad shoulders had lodged. These homeless scamps knew everything, and luckily this one spoke only partially broken French, for her own Spanish extended hardly beyond commonplace courtesies. Her pieces of silver had been exchanged for coarse flaxen trousers held up by a rope, a ragged knit shirt, and the all-concealing jacket, as well as some sturdy sandals. Trousers came naturally to her, since
she had often worn them when digging with her father, and they were far more practical than a dress for straddling a camel. She had concealed her hair under a bright kerchief bought from the market. With her brown complexion and small stature, she was sure she could pass for a street urchin.

The streets cleared of drunken soldiers and sailors, some
Beltranes
among them, and lights dimmed. Beth sank into a heap in her doorway, so anyone passing would think she was another orphan. Off-key voices howled closer until a last wheelbarrow trundled by with two souls dead to the world piled in it, pushed by two more scarcely better off. Beth began to wonder if she had mistaken her man, or whether he would creep out some back door and avoid her entirely. Her backside was numb. Just as she despaired, a shadow eased out of the door across the street. She would know those burly shoulders anywhere.

He glanced around, but his gaze passed over her still form and he strode off toward the corner. She waited until he turned uphill, and followed silently. He made no attempt to conceal himself as he walked up into the poorer sections of town. It was she who melted from doorway to doorway in pursuit. Cobblestones gave way to packed earth. The houses grew smaller, crouched behind stone walls that faced the street. Once he stopped at a house where an open window gave directly onto the roadway. It was half-open to catch the breeze off the water. But a dog began to bark and he moved on.

At last a door opened just as he passed, and light leaked full onto his countenance from what looked to be a small tavern. “Estancia, where are you going?” a voice yelled in Spanish. The slamming door was the only answer. A woman stepped into the street, swearing under her breath, almost into Rufford’s arms. He stepped back in surprise. Beth sheltered behind a morning glory vine draped over a wall, blossoms sleeping in the darkness.