Trade Wind (58 page)

He drew a folded sheet of parchment out of his breast pocket and handed it over to the Sultan, who read it with interest and complimented him on his Arabic script Rory bowed his acknowledgement and the Sultan clapped his hands to summon a slave and, when the materials were brought, signed his name with a reed pen, pressed his thumb-print below it, and watched while the royal seal was applied to the foot of the paper. “Are you now satisfied, my friend?” he enquired, handing it back.

“Entirely, thank you. I like to make sure of things: whenever it’s possible.”

“And now that you are sure, perhaps you will grant me a favour in return; yes?”

Rory looked up quickly, the shadow of a frown between his blond brows: “What is it? you know I will if I can.”

“Oh, it is nothing difficult,” said Majid airily, “but I should be pleased if you could take your ship to Dar-es-Salaam where as you know they are building me a new palace, which I can now afford to complete, and see how the work progresses.”

He stopped, as though that was all that he meant to say, and picking up a short, curved dagger with a hilt that was a parrot’s head fashioned from emeralds, affected to be interested in the design.

Rory said: “And?”

Majid smiled and tossed the dagger away: “You know me too well, it seems.”

“Well enough to know that you would not bother to send me on such a trivial errand if that was all there was to it,” said Rory dryly. “What is it you want?”

“Information. I have heard that a certain Hajji, one Issa-bin-Yusuf, who is a much respected man and has a house within a mile of where my palace is being built, is in league with these Gulf pirates, and that it is he who gives them their information as to the number of slaves they may find here, and whether it is worth their while to buy or steal. Also which households possess young slaves and well-looking children, and which are well guarded and dangerous to plunder, and which are not If this is true, and not a lying rumour spread by his enemies, then he will know of you as one who has also dealt in slaves, and you may approach him in that manner.”

“And if it is true?”

“Find out if the raiders will come this year, and how soon, and what they will take to leave this island in peace and buy or steal their slaves elsewhere. See, I will give you this—”

He thrust a hand under the cushions and produced a small brass-bound box, and opening it, spilt its contents on to the carpet: a dazzle of cut and uncut gems that lay in a pool of light, twinkling and glowing with colour. Diamonds, emeralds, balas and pigeon’s-blood rubies, amethysts, sapphires, alexandrites and opals. And among them a dozen pearls of a size, lustre and purity of colour that Rory had never seen equalled.

“It should prove enough, I think, to persuade them to go elsewhere,” said Majid, thoughtfully appraising the value of the lovely fragments of colour. “But there is no need to show them all, since half may be enough. That I will leave to you.”

Rory sat looking at them in silence, and Majid watched him anxiously and gave a small sigh of relief—or was it regret?—when at last he reached out a hand, and sweeping them together, restored them to their box and closing the lid said: “I’ll see what I can do. But isn’t there something that you haven’t taken into account?”

“That you might keep them?”

“Well, there is that,” grinned Rory, “though it wasn’t what I was thinking of just then. Doesn’t it occur to you that the sight of these stones may serve to whet their appetites, and that they may take them and then come over here to see if they can’t get a few more? If they think you have any more.”

Majid pondered, pulling his lip and frowning, and at last he said; “If you sat in my place, what would you do?”

Rory grinned at him. “That’s a darned silly question, when I’ve told you often enough what I’d do.”

“Yes, yes,” said Majid impatiently. “’
Fight them! Do not permit them to land. Send out ships to meet them and to fire upon them if they will not turn back!
‘ I have heard the like for too long, and again I tell you that it is foolishness. If I could not persuade my soldiers to advance against my brother’s supporters at
Marseilles
, though I placed myself at their head and the guns of the English had broken down the gates for them, how do you think I can spur them to fight these pirates of whom they are even more afraid? Besides, too many of my people here sell them slaves for good money.”

Rory shrugged and said: “In that case, if I may say so, your people here deserve everything they get, and until they are prepared to do something about defending themselves and their property, I’d leave them to take the consequences. After all, you’re all right: they don’t touch the Palace.”

“No. But when they have gone the people are angry, and it is I whom they blame for permitting such raids. As though I could stop three thousand men and more with my two hands! Allah, what foolishness! And what if these pirates become too vain-glorious and fire the town, as they have threatened to do before now? My Palace might bum too, and trade would be destroyed and the revenues dry up. We should be ruined! So do not let us have any more talk of fighting them.”

“Or of bribing them to stay away, either. Unless you can trust them to abide by their bond once they have those gems in their hands. Can you do that?”

“No,” admitted Majid gloomily. “They are the sons of jackals and she-devils, and good faith is not in them.”

He reached for the box, and thrusting it back again under the cushions, said: “You advise me then to submit?”

Rory gave a short laugh: “That’s something I wouldn’t advise my worst enemy to do! No, I’ve got a better idea.”

He glanced over his shoulder and then at the curtained doorways, and Majid, interpreting the look, clapped his hands and gave a brief order to the servant who answered the summons, and when the doors had been closed said: “Now they will not hear, so you may speak freely. What is this better idea that you have?”

Rory lowered his voice to an undertone and spoke softly and to the point, and when he had finished the Sultan’s smile became a chuckle, and finally a full-throated laugh:

“My friend,” said the Sultan. “My very dear friend, you are a son of Eblis and the father of cunning, and I will do as you say. You shall arrange it for me. And if they come, you will send me warning? I would not wish to be unprepared.”

“I will do that.’ Rory came to his feet and stood looking down at the plump, olive-skimmed man who sat cross-legged and chuckling on a throne of silken rugs and gold-fringed cushions, and was caught once again by that sudden and unpredictable sense of surprise. What was he, Emory Tyson Frost, son of Emory Frost of Lyndon Gables in the County of Kent, doing here in this outlandish setting? He laughed aloud, but at himself rather than with Majid, and saluting ceremoniously, turned and went away, walking with the slow unhurried stride that is the hallmark of Arabs and sea-faring men.

The curtain lifted and fell again behind him, and presently the Sultan slid a hand under the cushions, and drawing out the box of jewels, opened it and fell to studying them once more with a deep sense of satisfaction and an admiration of their beauty and purity of colour that went far beyond his keen appreciation of their value in terms of money. Yes, his friend was entirely in the right. Why should it be only the Sultan of Zanzibar who was compelled to pay out large sums from his private purse to purchase immunity from the Gulf pirates? It was surely only fair that the townspeople (particularly the Banyan merchants and the rich Arab landlords, who owned many slaves and were the chief sufferers from such raids) should shoulder a share of the burden, since they appeared unwilling to defend their property at the risk of their lives.

Until now, each man had hoped that by hiding his slaves and doing nothing to annoy the enemy he might escape their depredations, and that it would be his neighbour and not himself who would suffer. With the result that no concerted effort to deal with the pirates had ever been made, or (unless Rory Frost’s plan succeeded) ever would be made by the Sultan’s subjects. The raiders would continue to come year after year, and each time it would be his, Majid’s, money that would be expended in buying them off. And when die bargaining was over and they left at last, his frightened, angry and demoralized subjects would emerge from behind the barricaded doors of their houses to count the cost in stolen slaves, kidnapped children and looted goods, and turn on him, their Sultan, with outcries and complaints and demands that strong measures be taken to prevent any further recurrence of these outrages.

But if all went well perhaps next year they would be prepared to take a hand in putting a stop to these annual disasters, instead of confining themselves to complaining about them afterwards. It would be interesting to see.

26

“It is beautiful!” breathed Zorah, touching the filigree necklace with delicate, henna-tipped fingers and staring entranced at her reflection in the looking-glass.

The height of the room, with its Moorish arches and long stretch of cool
chunam
floor, made her appear even smaller and slighter by contrast, and Rory watched her and frowned; thinking that for all the early-flowering maturity of her Eastern blood, her absolute authority over his servants and the fact that she was the mother of a four-year-old daughter, she was still, by Western standards, little more than a child.

He had no idea how old she was, for at the time he had bought her she had been no more than a starving, terrified bundle of skin and bone, with the face of an old woman and a frame that might have belonged to a child of five. The negro slave dealer had told him that she was ten or twelve years old, and if cared for and well fed would “soon be a woman’; and Zorah herself had first said that she thought she was fourteen, and later that perhaps she was two years younger than that—or it might be two years older?—she did not know. But the slave dealer had been proved right as to the beneficial effects of care and good food, and since women in the East ripen earlier than those who live in colder climates (often being wives and mothers at a time when a Western girl of similar age would be wearing pinafores and studying her lessons in the schoolroom), it had been difficult to know which estimate of her age had been the right one; Zorah’s or the slave dealer’s. Or Rory’s own, which had originally been considerably lower than either.

Glancing at her reflection as she stood admiring the effect of the filigree necklace, he thought with a pang of guilt that perhaps his initial guess had been right, for she looked like a child in fancy dress. A lovely child wearing trousers of emerald-green silk below a tunic of cloth-of-silver the colour of moonlight: slender wrists and ankles encircled with bracelets of gold and spun glass, and about her neck the shimmer of seed-pearls, topaz and tourmaline.

She turned her head and smiled at him, her face alight with pleasure and her fingers caressing the trinket as though it were a sentient thing, and said again: “It is beautiful!”

“It borrows beauty from the wearer,” said Rory, reaching for that caressing hand and kissing it lightly.

A warm flush of rose coloured Zorah’s cheeks, and her smile was no longer one of pleasure but of pure happiness.

“That is not true, my lord, for it would lend beauty to a Queen. But it is sweet to hear you say it, when of late I have thought…I have feared…” Her soft voice faltered and her lashes dropped like dark curtains.

Rory took her chin in his hand and tilted up her face, but now she would not look at him. He said: “What is it that you have thought, my bird?”

“That you—that your slave had lost favour in your sight.”

“That is foolishness, little heart And since when have you been a slave?”

The black lashes lifted swiftly and her eyes were wide and passionate and adoring: “Always! From that first hour—and until the last. You may give me my freedom ten times over or ten thousand times, but it cannot alter that. I am still your slave, my lord and my life, and if I lose your favour I die!”

Rory’s hand dropped and he bent to kiss her cheek, but her arms flew up to clasp him and cling about his neck, and all the scented quivering softness of her slight body pressed against him in wild hunger and desperation. It was not only desire for his love and for its active demonstration that drove her, but the hunger to bear him a son and shame that she had not done so, and since Amrah’s birth had failed to conceive another child. She knew that she was not to blame for this, and yet she blamed herself; since surely it must be something lacking in herself—some beauty or grace or physical allure that she had once possessed and had now lost—that was responsible for his changed attitude towards her; for the infrequency of his desire and the casual kindness that had replaced passion?

She was not unaware that there were other women, for he had never attempted to disguise the fact, and in Zorah’s world, as in all the East, men were polygamous. She might wish in secret that they were not, but it was against both nature and tradition to expect them to be otherwise, and who was she to murmur if her lord distributed his favours to other women? Even to white women?

It was said that white women were sexually cold and unversed in the ways of love, yet it was of them that she was most afraid, because though the Sidi could speak and live as an Arab, he was of their blood, and it was her terror that he would one day find himself a wife from among them and return to his own land. But if she could only bear him a son, that fate might be averted. All men desired sons: strong, brave, handsome boys to carry on their line and reflect credit upon them. Daughters were pets and playthings, and if they were beautiful their value and their claim on a father’s affections might be enhanced thereby. But they could never replace a son, and Amrah was not beautiful as Zorah understood beauty. She was too like her father and she should have been a boy. Ah!—if only the All-Wise had seen fit to make her a boy, what a son she would have been!

Zorah, who adored the child, knew that Rory’s affection for his daughter, though real enough, contained something that she could not understand; a baffling quality of restraint and wariness as though, almost, he were afraid of her or of caring too much for her. And because she did not understand it she explained it to herself, with the philosophy born of uncounted generations of women who have believed themselves to be inferior beings, devoid of souls and created only for the service and pleasure of men and the bearing of children, as stemming from the fact that Amrah had disappointed him by being a girl. Had she been a boy he would have loved her and been fiercely proud of her strength and sturdiness and quick intelligence: Zorah was sure of that. And sure, too, that it was only disappointment that brought that curious closed look to his face. A look that she had noticed often enough, and that would come without warning when he had been playing with the child, or merely watching her as she teased the white cockatoo or raced in delighted, laughing pursuit of one of Pusser’s kittens. And when it came he would get up abruptly and leave the room, and often he would leave the house and not come back for a day—or a week or a month.