Falconer's Quest (20 page)

Together they stared across miles of water to the realm of yellow heat. The ocean met the shore in a series of steep hills, the sea of water giving way to a sea of sand. Falconer used Reginald’s telescope to study the terrain. The merchant’s spyglass was of etched brass and the outer rim circled in Spanish leather. The glass was the finest Falconer had ever used. Even so, he found no sign of life—not a tree, not a movement of any kind. Just sand and yellow rock and a rising ribbon of heat.

Amelia Henning protested, “But we are not here to battle anyone. We are here to rescue our children.”

Captain Harkness slapped his own spyglass shut. “We are also dealing with pirates, madam.”

“And what, may I ask, do you mean, sir?”

The captain turned from the desert to inspect the woman standing beside him. Harkness was as blunt in his features as his manner. His graying beard was chopped off like a spade. His features were sun-darkened and deeply lined. Falconer knew from Reginald Langston that the captain was forty-one years old. He looked sixty.

Yet his eyes were as clear as illuminated crystal and his voice was gentle as he said, “I have been deeply affected by your lessons these past mornings, madam.”

“Here, here,” Reginald agreed.

“You have not merely overcome a grievous loss. You have turned this tragedy into illumination.”

Amelia Henning dropped her gaze. “I have done very little, if anything, Captain.”

“You have allowed God to work in you. You did as you have been urging us to do, to
choose
. Only then can God work in the midst of life’s chaos.” He paused a moment, then said, “Your husband, may his soul rest in eternal peace, was blessed by having you at his side.”

The widow’s tone was very subdued. “You are telling me that I must not allow my fears and my distress to take control once more. I must trust you to do the best you can. The best
anyone
can.” She sighed. “You are right, of course.”

The captain extended his spyglass and returned to inspecting the shoreline. “A wise woman indeed.”

Bivens and Falconer spotted their goal at the same moment. The two cried, “There!”

“I see it.” Harkness scowled. “The heat causes all the markings to swim so, I might as well be peering beneath the hull.”

“Shall I order us closer to shore?” Bivens asked.

“No, we’ve attracted enough attention as it is.” He glanced at Falconer. “Tell me again what the Englishman said we’d find—what was his name?”

“Captain Clovis,” Falconer replied without taking his eye from the glass. “A ruined city has been turned into a roadside resting place, which the desert folk call a caravanserai. Four towers marking a city all but smothered by the desert. Two of the towers are crumbling; the others belong to a mosque at the city’s heart and not at the walls. The ruins spread out eastward, beyond the old fortifications, and are used as corrals. Bedouin tents rise beyond them.”

Bivens added, “Clovis also said the fortress walls are of brick and not stone.”

Harkness scowled at the danger beyond the horizon. “How the man saw the nature of those walls is beyond me. Did he make landfall?”

“Not he.” Falconer shook his head. “Two of his men.”

Bivens glanced at Amelia Henning, then added, “Captain Clovis stated that these corrals are used not just for animals.”

“I know that.” Harkness stiffened as the heat waves momentarily cleared. “Yes. There. Four towers. Two in ruins. Lieutenant, you may order the bosun to make way.”

They turned east and sailed toward Tunis. As they traversed the shoreline, they studied intently the knolls rising behind the caravanserai. Forming a backdrop to the road, the hills grew in height the further eastward the ship sailed. Midway between the caravanserai and Tunis, the cliffs reached a height of several hundred meters, paralleling the shoreline and about half a kilometer inland. Falconer watched a train of camels and donkeys and men parade in a slow desert cadence along the road running between the sea and the ocher cliffs. The hills were so close to the road as to frame the caravan in shades of yellow and auburn. Falconer was the first to sight a curious formation atop one hill, one that Captain Clovis had instructed them to identify. A pair of stone fingers rose half again as high as the hill itself, frozen in timeless salute to the sun and the heat.

Harkness shut his glass once more. “All right, I’ve seen enough. Lieutenant, bring us about. North by northwest. Take us well over the horizon.”

“Aye, sir. North by northwest it is.”

Harkness focused intently on Falconer. “If we take on this plan alone, we’ll be hung out like my dear wife’s laundry, flapping in the wind and open to attack. All I can say is I hope your English skipper is a man to be trusted.”

Falconer handed Reginald his telescope. “I hope so too, Captain.”

They were in position twelve hours before the scheduled meeting. First they sailed almost within hailing distance of the Tunis port. Harkness ordered that a brace of cannons be fired. In response, the ancient Carthage walls boiled with men. Falconer watched the sun spark upon curved scimitar blades and muskets chased in silver. The fortress guns boomed their reply. While Harkness had fired with powder alone, the fort’s guns used round shot and elevated their guns to the maximum. Even so, the balls arced high into the air, then fell harmlessly into the sea.

Harkness brooded by the quarterdeck railing. Falconer stood to one side, Amelia Henning and Reginald Langston to the other. Harkness said to the widow, “Tell me again what you know of the lay of the land.”

“Beyond this port area are a series of low hills.”

“Aye, I see that.”

“Beyond the hills is a giant lake. Or perhaps it is a third bay—I have no idea. But I did not see a connection to the sea. And beyond that is Tunis proper.”

The hillsides formed a distinctly desert scene. Low houses were surrounded by stone walls of the same color. The houses and the walls and the lanes all blended into the desert. Yet dotted among these were huge Bedouin tents, some larger than the more permanent dwellings.

“And the citadel?”

“You see it there.”

“It looks half destroyed. Or half finished.”

The fortress appeared so old it had melded with the northern cliffs. The southern side tumbled into a pile of rubble, the rubble disappeared into the slope of a dune, and the dune fell into the inner harbor. There were, as Amelia Henning had described to them earlier, no windows that Falconer could see. Spaced around the outer wall were tight arrow slits.

Amelia Henning’s voice had grown as low as the wind moaning through the rigging. “It is as dark and old as unmarked graves.”

Harkness lowered his telescope. “My dear Mrs. Henning, I am well aware this is extremely trying for you. But I must ask you to brace yourself. These questions are critical to the success of our venture.”

She straightened her shoulders with genuine effort. “Ask what you will of me, please.”

“Thank you.” Harkness returned to his inspection as the cannons fired again. “What say you, Bivens?”

“The gunners are either lazy or ill trained, sir.” Bivens handed the timepiece back to the skipper. “Four minutes between rounds. And the cannons do not track more than thirty degrees.”

“What does that mean?” Reginald asked.

“It means they are old guns, sir. Very old. It means that the man who occupies that keep is secure in his treaties and not his arms.”

“But we are not intending to attack!” the woman wailed, then covered her mouth with her hand.

“Even so, it pays to know our enemy, does it not?” Harkness cut off any reply by asking the lady, “You mentioned before that you entered the inner keep.”

“Two chambers only.” They all could see she was making every effort to hold to calm.

“From what I see, sir,” Bivens said, “the inner fortress could hardly hold much more.”

Falconer agreed. The fortress might have once been a far grander affair, but he doubted it. He had visited such desert-style keeps during his checkered past. The ancient builders did not intend to make palaces. They sought a strong room, a secure hold for their booty, and little else. The true palaces would be further inland, where their masters could live surrounded by the desert’s security.

“I spy one harbor only,” Harkness said.

“It only seems that way.” The woman’s voice was quiet but now as determined as the set of her spine. “There is a narrow spit of land, scarcely broader than the road which runs along its crest.”

“A road, you say.”

“Yes.” Her features were as taut as the wind-filled sails overhead. And as pale. “It runs from one side of the harbor to the other. Ringing that are the slave corrals and the fortress. The slave keepers’ quarters are in the stubby tower you see there.”

Harkness raised his voice, addressing both the young officer beside him and the crew on watch. “Lieutenant Bivens!”

“Aye, sir.”

“Come about and head us back along the shoreline. Stay well clear of the gunner’s range, mind.”

“Aye, sir. Ready about!”

The ship wheeled its graceful curve, the sails refilled, and they began their steady progress back toward Tunis. Harkness directed his company to the deck’s opposite railing and resumed his careful study. “Madam, I must ask you again about the dungeons.”

Clearly she had been expecting this. “Massive. Endless. Dark. Terrifying.”

“Be so good as to describe all you can remember of your approach.”

“I was bound as a slave, my arms and hands behind me, the rope reaching up to encircle my neck.” She could not erase the tremors from her words. “I met with some smirking official in the keep’s first chamber. The great doors were open, and I saw La Rue seated in the other, holding audience. The official gave me the message for Master Langston. I did not speak with La Rue directly. I was then taken downstairs.”

“The stairs opened from the outer chamber?”

Her features tightened further and she drew her lips together as she strained to remember. “There was a door bound in iron. No…wait, I remember. We crossed a small space back toward the outer walls. I thought we were done and that I was being taken back to the pen holding the women.”

“The doorway was attached to the wall?”

“No. It was in a small house—maybe a shed.”

“To the right or the left of the main entrance?” Falconer asked.

“I don’t…yes, to the right.”

“You are certain?”

“Leaving the inner keep, we started toward the fortress gates, and then I was pulled off to the right.” Her voice raised a notch. “How is it possible I would forget this until now?”

“You were exhausted, you were terrified for your daughter. Of course your memories were chaotic.” Falconer pointed to the shoreline, redirecting her attention back to the recollection. “So they took you to a small house and you entered through a stout door sealed with iron strips. Was the door shut?”

“Yes.” Her voice was firmer now. More confident. “There was a guard. He stood away from the door. No. He leaned against the wall.”

“In the shade,” Falconer softly prompted.

“Not for that reason. Well, I suppose. But as we approached there was the most horrid stench. Oh, I have nightmares about the smell.”

Falconer saw the tears forming. “We will do all we can to rescue your daughter from that place, Mrs. Henning. Now tell me. Were the stairs straight?”

“Winding. Stone. Broad at the top. There was a table and chairs inside the doorway, but they were empty.”

“Shoddy way to run a keep,” Harkness mumbled.

“The stairs narrowed further down,” she went on. “The dungeon was a straight line running off in two directions, perhaps more. I only saw two. Dark as caves, lit by torches. Perhaps it was once a cave, because the walls were coarse and rough hewn.”

“Roman by design, most likely,” Harkness commented. “I have seen the same once before. With small caves or alcoves as both cells and strong rooms, and doors of wood.”

And no light within,
Falconer finished silently, unless the prisoner had access to funds to buy lamp oil. “Were there many guards down below?”

“One at the base of the stairs. And the jailer. He bore a great ring of keys upon his belt.”

“No one else? Just the one guard?”

“None that I saw.” She turned away from the shore and inspected the men’s faces. “Why is that important?”

None of the men spoke, save in the examination they gave each other. Grave and determined and ready for what they all were certain would now come.

Chapter 23

At twilight, Falconer approached Amelia Henning and Matt, who were seated on a bench fashioned by two planks roped between water barrels. Their backs rested upon the wall alongside the quarterdeck stairs, shielded from the wind that grew chillier with the sun’s descent. Amelia had draped a stiff blanket about her shoulders. Many women as fine as she would reject the horsehair as both scratchy and unbecoming. She, however, wore it as another might a fashionable shawl. She held a prayer book in her hands.

When their heads lifted from the book, Falconer said, “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“On the contrary, you are most welcome, John Falconer.” Her gaze had cleared since the morning’s ordeal. Now the sunset and the wheelman’s torches illuminated eyes that were full of a light all her own.

“I can stand if you wish to sit, Father John.”

“Remain where you are, lad.” He pulled up a stubby bench used by the sailors when repairing canvas. “It is not my habit to leave important things undone.” He looked into her face, then away. “I have not thanked you for your lessons these past mornings.”

“I too have found great comfort in this company of wise and caring men.”

His finger absently traced along the scar ringing his wrist, then down the deeper one across his palm. “I have never been one to look much within myself. And such words do not come easily to me.”

“Which makes them all the more cherished, John Falconer.”

Perhaps it was her tone. Perhaps the usage of both of his names. Whatever the reason, he felt compelled again to lift his gaze and meet her own. “I have never truly been able to mourn the loss of Ada—of my wife.” He reached out a hand to Matt, who grasped it with both of his own.