Sea Fire (30 page)

T
he house that the Sheikh made available for their use was not, as Cathy had pictured, four mud walls and a roof. Instead, it was a veritable palace, made of thick white stone with huge, airy rooms and marble floors. Inside it was cool even in the blazing mid-afternoon heat, and Cathy found it no hardship to remain indoors. The house was shaped like a hollow box, with all four inner walls opening onto a small courtyard. Here she could sit in perfect privacy when she felt the need of fresh air, which was most often at dusk. It was in that courtyard, surrounded by the sweet scents of exotic flowers and
the lush greenery that was only allowed to bloom by virtue of constant watering, that she spent her most enjoyable hours. Seated on an elegantly carved stone bench near the gushing fountain that formed the garden’s centerpiece, she found the trials and tribulations of the outside world very far away.

Servants had been provided as a matter of course. They were small, dark-skinned, and unobtrusive, and ran the house so well that Cathy was left with nothing to do. Which suited her very well. Going into the seventh month of her pregnancy, she was tired almost all the time. Each afternoon she succumbed to an overwhelming compulsion to nap. By the time she awoke, bathed, and dressed, it was time to eat supper, which she usually took alone, or with Angie, who occasionally came from the ship to bear her company. Cathy would have invited the girl to stay with them, but Jon had firmly vetoed that idea. The more people from the
Cristobel
who lived ashore, the greater the potential for trouble, he told Cathy grimly. It was bad enough that her foolishness had forced them into a position where they had to come in daily contact with the devoutly Moslem native Berbers.

Jon himself was absent every day and usually long into the night. Overseeing the repairs to the
Cristobel
took up a great deal of his time, and in addition he was occupied with teaching some of the Sheikh’s sailors the finer points of navigation. This he had promised to do in return for the materials needed to get the ship in seaworthy condition, and for the victuals needed before they could set out on a trans-ocean voyage. Both parties to the deal considered that they had struck a good bargain, which Cathy supposed they had.

For appearances’ sake, she and Jon shared a bed. The servants, while polite to a fault, no doubt reported their every movement to the Sheikh as a matter of course, as Jon informed Cathy dryly when she objected to this arrangement. Unless she had a fancy to be one of the Sheikh’s many concubines, she had better make
a pretty convincing show of belonging to Jon. And even if the thought of joining a harem didn’t trouble her, Jon added nastily, she had better give a little thought to what the Sheikh’s likely reaction would be if he discovered that they had lied to him. He would be displeased, to say the least, and while the
Cristobel
lay as helpless as a beached whale, the Sheikh’s displeasure was something they could ill afford.

Since he had discovered that she was with child, Jon had not tried to make love to her. Cathy, piqued by this omission, would not admit it even to herself. She was positively thankful that he found her expanding body repulsive, she told herself fiercely, and tried not to spend most of her waking moments speculating on whether or not Jon was taking Sarita to bed in her stead.

As weeks passed, her coming
accouchement
began to occupy Cathy’s mind to the exclusion of all else. This child was not as active as Cray had been, and she was nowhere near as elephantine, but still she could anticipate the birth with nothing but dread. Having a baby in a foreign land without a doctor was not going to be a picnic, she foresaw. Still, it was better by far than giving birth on a ship in mid-ocean. Fervently she began to hope that Jon meant to stay in Rabat until after the child had put in an appearance. When she ventured to broach the subject, one night when they were silently sharing the enormous, mosquito-netting-draped bed, his reply was brusque.

“I had it in mind,” was all he said, but Cathy felt inordinately relieved.

The child became more active at night, kicking and squirming until Cathy could hardly rest. Which, she supposed with an inward grin, partly explained why she was so sleepy all day. She knew Jon had to feel the unmistakable signs of life inside her when she curled against his broad back for warmth during the cold desert nights, but he made no mention of it. Indeed, it was as
if he was determined to pretend that the coming child did not exist. He referred to it only when necessity dictated, and when he looked at her Cathy noted that he was careful to keep his eyes above her waist. This cavalier attitude infuriated Cathy, although she was too proud to let her anger show. Whether he wished to acknowledge it or not, she was going through all this discomfort to give life to
his
child. The least he could do, in her opinion, was show a little interest.

The few times he was forced to mention the coming baby, he made it clear that his opinion as to the child’s paternity had not changed. He still considered it Harold’s, which enraged Cathy all the more. “If that’s what he thinks, then bully for him,” she thought furiously more than once. “He has no legal claim to me or the child, and as soon as we get somewhere civilized he can go his way and we’ll go ours. And Cray’s.”

When Cathy did on rare occasions go out in public, it was in Jon’s company. After what had happened that first day in port, she was not foolish enough to defy him over this. Dressed like a Berber woman in a flowing white robe that both concealed her pregnancy and covered her hair, she attracted little attention. True to Jon’s words, she found that it was the custom for the women to walk humbly behind their men, their heads discreetly covered, and the ends of the enveloping burnooses held up over the lower half of their faces. In response to Jon’s terse command, Cathy grudgingly complied with what was expected of her. But she found trailing at Jon’s heels like a puppy dog so mortifying that she was glad to stay at home.

It was just as bad when they had guests. She was permitted to join the company—like a good child, she thought
resentfully—but she could not eat with the men, and she had to sit deferentially behind Jon all the while, muffled in that ubiquitous white robe as she stared at the marble floor and remained as silent as a grave. After her first experience of this, Cathy tried to decline
any encores. But Jon informed her ruthlessly that her absence from such gatherings would be viewed as an insult, and so she had to swallow her spleen and do as she was told.

Mustafa Kemal was a frequent guest, and he left Cathy in no doubt that he still saw her as a potential addition to the Sheikh’s harem. Once he even made an insinuating inquiry of Jon as to what he planned to do with her after she was delivered of the child. Jon passed it off with a laugh, but Cathy felt uneasy. Suddenly she was not quite as eager to remain on dry land for her lying-in as she had been.

Once Jon took her to visit the ship, and Cathy saw that the repairs were well under way. The
Cristobel
should be sea-worthy again before Cathy herself was, and this realization provided Cathy with a modicum of comfort. Soon, if they had to escape, there would be a way.

While Jon stopped to talk to O’Reilly about some of the finer points of the ship’s reconstruction, Cathy came face to face with Sarita. She was taken aback by the naked hatred she saw in the other woman’s black eyes.

“Whore!” Sarita hissed in her face. Before Cathy could frame a reply, Jon was turning back to her, and Sarita slunk away. Despite its brevity, the episode left Cathy feeling chilled.

About a week after this encounter, Cathy supped alone, and retired early to bed as had recently become her custom when Jon was away. She shed the white robe that was her inevitable garment by day with relief. Piling her long hair on top of her head, she started to step into the tiled bath that was built into the floor of the small anteroom adjoining the bedroom she and Jon shared. This bathroom was as opulent as the rest of the house, and Cathy knew that it was one thing she would miss when they left. With servants to fill the deep, wide basin with warm water, provide towels and scented soap, and then discreetly vanish, it was almost sinfully luxurious.

As she stepped down, she caught a glimpse of herself in the enormous mirror that
adorned the opposite wall. It was the first time she had looked at herself naked for quite a while, and she could not like what she saw. With her belly swollen out to there, and her breasts heavy and pendulous with milk, she thought that she could understand why Jon preferred Sarita. She could describe herself by no other word than grotesque, Cathy thought glumly, not seeing the soft sheen of her skin and hair, and the luminescence of her blue eyes. Quickly she sat in the warm water to hide her body from the mirror’s all-seeing eyes. To look at herself was only to feel depressed.

As Cathy bathed, her thoughts turned of their own volition to Jon. He had treated her, for the most part, with cool civility ever since they had moved into the house, as if he were a polite stranger who had no desire to further the acquaintance. Even in bed he turned his back, and this indifference nettled Cathy mightily. If he was trying to show her without words that she no longer meant anything to him except as an unwelcome responsibility, then he was succeeding very well. To her surprise, the thought hurt. She had once loved him with all her heart, and not so very long ago, either. But, she reminded herself, “once” was the word to cling to. If he no longer loved her—and she was very sure he did not, his actions made that plain—then she was fiercely glad that her love for him was equally dead. And if it was not quite as simple as that, she vowed that he at least would never know it.

When Cathy finally emerged from the tub, dried herself, and pulled the simple cotton shift that one of the servants had procured for her to use as a nightdress over her head, she was feeling decidedly weepy. She blamed her moroseness on the crotchets which tended to beset females in the last stages of pregnancy, although secretly she knew that it wasn’t only that. But she refused to consider the other probable cause, and instead took herself firmly to bed.

She couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned and thumped the pillow, and wished bitchily that Jon was present so that he would be forced to
suffer her discomfort with her. It wasn’t fair that she had to go through all the misery and pain associated with bearing a child, while he had all the fun, and then refused to acknowledge that child as his! As she thought about it, Cathy got angrier than she had been in weeks. “Loathsome swine,” she called him blackly, and sank back down into the too-soft mattress, her arms crossing angrily over her decidedly tender breasts. She would be waiting for him when he came in at last, she planned venomously, and as soon as he walked through the door she would let him have it with both barrels!

It was some time later when she at last heard the unmistakable sounds of Jon letting himself quietly into the house. The fine edge of her anger had somewhat dulled, but she was still determined to let him know of her displeasure. To be totally abandoned for hours on end, day after day, was too much, and so she would tell him! Not that she particularly wanted his company—in fact, quite the opposite!—but she could see no reason why Angie should not be permitted to bear her company. After all, it was highly unlikely that the girl would cause any trouble with the sphinx-like Berbers, and besides. . . .

This thought was interrupted by the opening of the bedroom door. Cathy, sitting bolt upright in the bed, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes snapping militantly, had already parted her lips to deliver her opening salvo when she perceived, to her amazement, that it was not Jon who was slipping cautiously through the door. It was Sarita!

“What are you doing here?” she gasped as soon as surprise let her speak. Really, if Jon had dared to bring his doxy to this house, she would slay him bare-handed! How dared he . . . !

Sarita smiled at her, her black eyes glittering malevolently in the darkness of the room.

“I have a little surprise for you,” she murmured, and then over her shoulder into the shadowy hall, she called softly. “Hurry up! She’s in here, you fools!”

Cathy was by this
time beginning to feel alarmed. Whoever Sarita was talking to, it certainly was not Jon. She had addressed the unseen persons in the plural, and besides, the woman would never dare to refer to Jon as a fool! Whatever Sarita had planned, Cathy was sure that it was nothing that she would enjoy. All at once, with a great thumping of her heart, she began to fear for her life. If she and her coming baby were to die, Sarita might imagine that she would be left a clear field with Jon!

No sooner had the thought occurred to Cathy than she was opening her mouth to scream for help while at the same time struggling into a crouching position in the middle of the big bed. She would fight. . . . But there was no time. The first shrill notes of her scream had barely left her throat when two men burst through the door and leapt toward her. Cathy barely recognized one of them as that repulsive Grogan when they were upon her, one large hand clamping roughly over her mouth while her arms were strained behind her and secured with some sort of silken rope. Before she could do more than give a token kick, her legs had suffered the same treatment. She lay helplessly on the bed, her eyes staring apprehensively over the top of the gag that had been thrust into her mouth. Dear God, what could they mean to do with her? Perhaps throw her, gagged and bound, into the bay to drown?

“Scared, Lady?” Grogan leaned over to whisper tauntingly in her face while Sarita laughed maliciously in the background. “No need to be. We don’t aim to hurt you none. It’s just that Sarita here has made a little deal with that man of the Sheikh’s.”

“You’ll like living in a harem, won’t you, deary?” Sarita joined Grogan to hiss down at her. “Just the place for a whore like you! Jonny won’t even know what happened to you—not that he’ll care! I mean to keep him too busy to even remember your name!”