The Lioness of Morocco(23)
André pulled Sibylla into a dark passageway. “I spotted you on the rooftop—your hair was uncovered. And then you disappeared. I thought you must be on your way home, so I came to find you.” His voice was so tender, and still he held her arm. Sibylla’s knees trembled.
“I apologize for the ambush,” André continued. “I had to see you.”
He was standing very close. She could feel the warmth of his body and smell the masculine scent of his skin.
“Why?” she asked quietly. “What are you planning to do now that you have—ambushed me?” If he was planning to take her into his arms and kiss her, she would not object at all.
“I want us to meet in peace and take the time to speak our hearts truly. Will you meet me at the old Portuguese church, Sibylla? We would be completely undisturbed.”
Sibylla burned to hear the truth of his heart. And yet the idea of meeting this dashing Frenchman in the ruined church troubled her.
“Monsieur Rouston, I am a married woman and cannot slink through the alleyways like a thief to meet with a man! What if we’re seen?”
“I will wait outside your house after evening prayers,” André responded. “No one will see us in the dark. Not even the moon will betray us. The crescent is still very small.”
“Truly, you have thought of everything. But I have not even agreed to meet,” she said sharply. It annoyed her that he had made a plan before consulting her. If this Frenchman thought she could be had so easily, he was mistaken!
André, however, was undeterred. “Please, Sibylla! I know you feel that there is something special between us.”
He gently placed a loose strand of hair behind her ear, making goose bumps rise all over her body. Benjamin might have shared her bed, he might be the father of her children, and yet none of that had created a bond between the two of them. André only needed to touch her lightly and she was ready to forget her marital vows.
“You may be right,” she admitted. “But is that reason enough for clandestine meetings?”
“Is this not all we have?” he asked urgently. “In two, maybe three days, I will be riding back to the Chiadma, and months will pass before we see each other again.”
She looked into his eyes. “If we had met earlier, under different conditions. But that was not to be . . .” She stopped. “It’ll be dark soon. I must go. Au revoir, André.”
Before she could have second thoughts, Sibylla forced herself to cross the courtyard. But André rushed after her.
“I will wait in front of your house, Sibylla,” he whispered emphatically. “Will you come?”
She couldn’t help but smile as she looked into his face. “I do not know. But please do not wait in front of the house. The gatekeeper will see you. Wait by the little gate to the back alley.”
“God is great, God is great. There is no god besides God!” the muezzin intoned.
It was almost midnight. Sibylla wrapped the shawl around her head and shoulders, took her shoes in one hand and a candle in the other, and tiptoed out of her room. She paused for a moment in the corridor, but the house was silent. She heard the distant rolling of the waves and the wind rustling through the leaves of the olive trees. Outside the window, a few stars were twinkling in the sky, and a few gray clouds drifted past the silver crescent moon.
I am twenty-seven years old, she thought, as she padded along the wooden floor. And here I am, in love for the first time. What a wonderful feeling.
Over dinner, while Benjamin told her more than she’d ever wanted to know about guns, Sibylla had put aside all her misgivings. She had persuaded herself that she would give in just this one time and go to André. Then she would carry the memory of these few hours forever in her heart. Maybe it was wrong. But just once in her life, she wanted to know what it felt like to be held by a man who truly desired her and whom she desired.
Having made her resolution, she felt a happiness and freedom she had not felt for a long time. She even began to take pleasure in the notion of doing something so profoundly forbidden to women. Adultery was said to be a sin for men as well, but just how little this mattered was evident by her husband’s indelicate behavior.
When she reached the children’s room, she stopped, and could not resist stepping inside. The candle revealed her darling boys sleeping soundly in their beds. Tom sighed and furrowed his brow in his sleep. She leaned over and stroked his head. Rosy-cheeked Johnny clutched the little donkey she had sewn him.
She was suddenly struck that one of her boys might wake up with a tummyache. That they might cry for their mother, who would be gone—off seeking her own pleasure. Benjamin would wake up and discover that she had left the house in the middle of the night.
What sort of uncaring mother was she? While her marriage was not worth the paper on which the license was printed, her children meant everything to her!
No, she could not go. She would have to forgo her own short-lived happiness with André Rouston, no matter how great the pain.
Chapter Twelve
Mogador, January 1840
“Should a fully loaded ship not sit deeper in the water, Philipps?” Qaid Hash-Hash furrowed his brow as he looked at the Queen Charlotte’s stern.
The harbormaster was also watching the great sailing ship, which was slowly being maneuvered through the narrow harbor exit, and nodded pensively. “I agree, Your Excellency, a fully loaded ship should sit much lower in the water.”
“Is there any danger of her running aground if she takes on all the freight in her capacity?” The qaid knew only too well that the harbor basin was sandy and in urgent need of being dredged. But, by God, who was going to bear the costs of such an undertaking? The sultan had already made it known that he could not spare a single dirham. That left the merchants, but they were terrible misers who sat on their money like brooding hens.
“That might indeed be a possibility at low tide, but right now it is high tide and she has sufficient water under her keel,” Philipps answered.
“Perhaps it’s the type of freight?” the governor pressed. “Ostrich feathers are light; elephant tusks take up a lot of room. That might explain the missing draft in a fully loaded ship.”
Still, the harbormaster shook his head. “She has mostly leather and barrels of palm oil, in addition to a few crates filled with spices on board.”
“Hmm.” The frustrated qaid scratched his black goatee. “Destination?”
“Baltimore, Your Excellency, in the United States of America.”
“You are certain of that?” The black raptor eyes focused on the harbormaster.
“Quite certain, Your Excellency. Is something wrong?” Philipps felt himself breaking into a sweat in spite of the cool December breeze. He quickly ran through the Queen Charlotte’s clearance process to rule out any mistake he might have made. Qaid Hash-Hash did not take kindly to mistakes of that nature. More than a few had found themselves in the fortress dungeon on the governor’s mere suspicion that he might have missed out on some duties or taxes.
The qaid beckoned the boy who was carrying his water pipe for him and took a long puff. As he slowly exhaled the smoke, he again considered the mighty West Indian sailing ship. The wind carried the sound of whistles and bellowed commands to his ears. Sailors were climbing the rigging and running back and forth on deck.
The qaid’s onboard spy had told him the ship was heading south. The governor puckered his lips in disdain when he thought of the man’s eagerness to talk when threatened with a few spoonfuls of molten lead in his stomach. And he had spilled another secret: the ship’s carpenter had received orders to add two steerage decks as soon as they reached the open seas.
Hash-Hash snapped his fingers and the boy quickly took the hookah pipe from him. “Philipps!”
The harbormaster started with fright. “Your Excellency?”
“Why would a ship sail southward if it should be sailing westward?”
Philipps frowned. “It could have to do with the wind or the ocean’s currents, but not here in Mogador, Your Excellency. All ships sail westward from here. So perhaps it is picking up more cargo in another harbor before crossing the Atlantic.”
The qaid’s nostrils twitched like those of a bloodhound that has picked up a scent. “What kind of cargo could a ship like the Queen Charlotte take on from the Saharan coast?”
“None,” Philipps replied without understanding. “There aren’t even any decent harbors down there. The Queen would have to head much farther south, say to Guinea or the Gold Coast, but down there the cargo is mostly slaves.”
Qaid Hash-Hash folded his hands behind his back and looked out to sea. The Queen Charlotte had left the narrow harbor exit behind her. Seagulls were circling above her masts. Her sails billowed in the wind as her pointed bow slowly headed south.
Finally, it all fits, the governor thought with satisfaction. The secret meetings that Hopkins and Toledano had been having with the Queen Charlotte’s captain, the half-loaded ship, and the riches that vulgar Englishman had amassed—the latest an odd bowl with gilded lion’s feet, which he called a “bathtub.”
Hopkins was obviously realizing profits for which he paid neither taxes nor duties. But it was not until now that Qaid Hash-Hash could be certain how he did it: slaves.