The guard screamed and dropped his blade. His hands clawed at the pain in his middle as he lunged forward, face down.
The pasha of Tripoli stared at his fallen gladiator. He was still watching the death throes when a soft hand touched his arm.
The woman had come forward from the goldsmith’s stall at the first clang of the curving blades. Above the gold rim of her black silk veil, her yellow cat eyes glowed brightly, moving from the scimitars to the big, almost naked body of the American, then sliding sideways to the bronzed features of the pasha. Slyly, she had noted the faint touch of envy in his glance. Now she put a soft finger on his arm, so that he would turn and look at her.
Marlani Chamiprak was aware that she made a stirring figure, with the late afternoon sunlight on her thin, black silk trousers and long yelek of black satin threaded with gold that hugged her lissome body from throat to knees. Her veil was attached by silver pins to her glossy black hair. She was the favorite wife of Yussuf Caramanli, his bash-kedin, and her slightest whim was a command to him.
She said softly, “The infidel killed my personal bodyguard, Yussuf.”
“He shall be tortured with the bastinado on his naked feet, and the screws on his limbs, my love.”
She pouted. “Oh, no! I would not want that.” She added slyly, “He is a good fighter, is he not?”
The pasha sighed. “By the beard of the prophet! As good a man as I have seen since the days of my youth, when I fought beside Murad reis himself.”
Marlani looked on the big Frank with overbright eyes. Mashallah! He was a handsome one, even in his starved state. There was pride in him, and a kind of inner wildness that sent little trickles of excitement down her slim brown legs. He was a different man from fat, bloated Kefas. It might be enjoyable, having him around the harem as her personal bodyguard. Yussuf paid little enough attention to her any more, being too concerned with this war he had managed to get himself into with the United States.
She let her warm little hand come to rest on Yussuf’s wrist. “Make him my guard, pasha effendi. Let the unbeliever take the place of Kefas!”
Yussuf Caramanli lifted his hard brown face to study the woman at his elbow. Marlani let her eyes smile up at this man who had deposed his brother Hamet for the pashaship of Tripoli less than a dozen years ago. She read the fierce pride in him, the ruthlessness and the cruelty. She knew also of the frustration that ate in him, because of the big American frigates like the Constitution that prowled the outer waters of the city and harbor he ruled. He was very angry now with the big blond American who had killed Kefas.
“You want me protected from all danger,” she pouted, caressing his arm with slim fingertips. “And you said yourself this man can fight as well as Murad reis of blessed memory. Give him to me, Yussuf. Let him guard me, for you.”
His nostrils flared. Yussuf Caramanli was confused, as he often was when this sly desert wife of his set her wits to obtain favors from him. Only in the most important matters did he ever seek to cross her, and then only sparingly. Now, as a gesture, he protested.
“But he is an infidel!”
“A hungry infidel,” she reminded him, smiling beneath her veil. “If he will eat a rotten melon off the street, he would be grateful to whoever gives him better fare. He will be like a dog in his devotion.”
The pasha glanced at the nearly naked American. He grumbled, “He should be made a eunuch.”
“That would destroy his fighting abilities. You saw how easily he beat down poor, fat Kefas! If you really want to protect me, give me someone like that!”
The pasha grunted. What his bash-kedin said was true enough. To make a eunuch of this man would be to deprive him of a swordarm that might serve the Caramanlis with fanatical devotion. Still, he was an American, and Tripoli was at war with the Americans.
Marlani Chamiprak pressed closer. “Your enemies are not all Americans, remember! Your brother Hamet is not dead. He has many friends in Tripoli. Some night he may send someone to kill me, knowing how dear I am to you. The nasrany would be a very tiger against such an attack.”
The pasha of Tripoli studied the bone structure of the slave. He had a big, strong body, a body that could defend him as well as his kedin, if the need arose. It would not matter to the American whether he killed one Tripolitan or another. Yussuf rather thought that this yellow-haired slave might enjoy killing some of Hamet’s friends, if they ever did attack him. Yussuf shivered with anticipatory fear, and looked closer at the big slave. That tall body would fill out with hard muscle when he ate something other than street refuse.
Yussuf Caramanli prided himself on his judgment. He said harshly, “Who owns you, nasrany?”
“Ali ben Sidi, the stone merchant.”
“I will buy you from him. I will make you personal guard to Marlani. Do well, and you shall be rewarded well. Fail and—” The pasha shrugged. He said softly, “Have you ever seen what a lead-tipped knout can do to a man?”
The man in the dirty rag shivered. His bared back bore the scars of former whippings. The pasha smiled cruelly.
“What is your name, infidel dog?”
The arrogance of Yussuf Caramanli, before whose corsair fleets all the world appeared to tremble, brought a spate of fury into the starving man. He let the anger run along his veins, enjoying its feel after so many months of subservience. It was good to be half blind with clean rage again. Not the craze of almost madness that had been in him short moments ago—that was rash, and only brought destruction to a man. This anger was different; it was cool and it let a man think, and it was all the more deadly because of that.
Not since Ali ben Sidi had strung him up by his wrists and ordered his bare back lashed to a bloody froth, had he been this way. That had been three days after the U.S. Philadelphia had run aground on the shoals of the harbor of Tripoli.
The United States and the Barbary state of Tripoli had been at war in that mid-autumn of 1803, a war begun when Yussuf Pasha used an axe on the flagpole of the American consulate at Tripoli when that young nation across the Atlantic refused to join its European fellows in paying tribute to the corsairs.
A fleet under the command of Commodore Edward Preble had gathered at Gibraltar to blockade the North African coast. Under Captain Bainbridge, the Philadelphia ran the shoals and reefs of those treacherous waters, hunting corsair ships. On the last day of October, while chasing a small vessel standing in for the protection of the Tripolitan roadstead, the Philadelphia scraped across a reef.
Stephen Fletcher had been taken from the helpless frigate to the slave mart, and then to the stone quarries. When he showed stubbornness and fight, Ali ben Sidi had summoned his big slave master. Fletcher had been strung up by the wrists and lashed until his bare back was a bloody pulp.
The cuts of that whip had gone deeper than the flesh they marred. They taught him caution and prudence, and a seeming humility. He learned how to behave like a slave under the lash that night. Ali ben Sidi had no more trouble with him. He worked days in the stone quarries, and the nights he spent sleeping fitfully, dreaming of the Virginia plantation that had been his home, and of the fields of tobacco and cotton shifting in the breeze off the Shenandoahs.
The year and a half since the grounding of the Philadelphia added to the strength of his long thighs and lean middle, putting power in his chest and arms, ridging his back with swollen muscles. He was half starved all the time, and was never really free of the bite of hunger, and so in those hours when he was excused from the quarries, he took to scavenging in the streets.
Now, for the first time in many months, the starving man saw a chance