Master of Paradise (24 page)

Soundlessly, as prearranged, Rodrigo and his
men stalked the beach and sneaked up from behind. Jumping the
crewmen, they took vines they’d gathered earlier and swiftly
secured their hands and feet. Then Rodrigo waved Gabrielle from the
brush and helped her into the dhow as the others guided it back
into the sea.

“Should we leave them in the sun?” Wallace
asked, looking back at the struggling crewmen lying like frying
bacon on the sand. They’d burn beyond repair in a matter of
hours.

“Their compatriots will join them shortly,”
Rodrigo assured him. “They’ll set them free.”

As a supply ship that ferried from one island
to the other, the schooner was unarmed. Rodrigo’s men found little
resistance as they scaled the sides and overpowered the crew. There
was a brief skirmish when the crewmen realized what had happened,
but the intruders had both surprise and expertise as allies. Within
minutes, they tossed the crew overboard to swim for shore.

“Won’t this ship be missed?” Higgins asked as
Rodrigo gave orders to man the sails.

“There won’t be a ship out here for weeks,”
Jonah Fitch answered for him. “This is the end of the line for this
schooner. No one will miss her for a month. By then we’ll be in
Zanzibar.”

“And we’ll have Cullen back,” Gabrielle
said.

Placing his hands on the helm, Rodrigo
muttered, “God willing.”

She didn’t like the way he said that. He was
worried. What did he know that he wasn’t sharing? “Rodrigo—”

She was interrupted by one of his men, an
African who pointed to the sea, gesturing emphatically to make a
point. Gabrielle thought she recognized a word of Portuguese now
and then, but it didn’t sound like any Portuguese she’d ever heard.
The only word she remembered hearing before was
mkombozi
.
The same word Wallace had used to the slave in Hastings’s
bedroom.

She went to Wallace, who was listening
closely with a frown puckering his red face. “What language is
that?” she asked.

“Swahili.”

“I thought I recognized some Portuguese.”

“Swahili is a mixture of Arabic, Portuguese,
and some African tribal languages,” he explained. “A kind of
trader’s tongue.” But he said it distractedly as he glanced out at
the sea in the direction in which the man was pointing.

She moved to Rodrigo’s side. “What was he
saying?”

“He says this is not a good time to embark on
such a journey. This is cyclone season off the coast of Africa. The
winds make it hazardous to sail there this time of year.”

Jonah Fitch came rushing across the deck.
“There’s no cows.”

“Cows?” Gabrielle asked, confused.

“Sea cows, ma’am. They’re normally all over
the rocks in this part of Seychelles. Seafarers in these waters
consider the dugongs good luck. Their absence is a bad omen, ma’am.
Maybe we should wait, sir.”

“We can’t wait!” Gabrielle cried. “Who knows
how they’re treating him? You, yourself, have said the sultan is a
monster.”

“The sultan,” spat Wallace, “is a monster
of...inconceivable proportions.”

She felt dangerously close to hysteria.
Seeing this, Rodrigo took her hands in his and made her face him,
willing her through his determined presence to focus on what he
said.

“I know you want to rescue him, and I want to
help you. But we can’t do anything foolish. Zanzibar is a fortress.
The sultan is protected by his own personal army of guards and a
fleet that’s only gone for a few days out of the month to patrol
his holdings on the African coast. When the fleet’s gone, the
palace guard is diluted to watch over the docks. That would be our
only chance. If the fleet’s in, there’s nothing we can do but wait
for it to leave. We’ll need some luck.”

Her eyes were blind with tears. “He needs us,
Rodrigo. We’ve got to get him out of there. I can’t make the same
mistake again. I can’t lose him one more time. Don’t you
understand? No matter what it takes, we
must
get him
out.”

Zanzibar. As a child, the very name had
conjured for Gabrielle images of romance and exotic adventure.
Every English youngster had heard tales of the mysterious island
off the coast of eastern Africa, where the mighty Arab sultan
reigned supreme. She’d often formed the word on her tongue,
savoring the magical texture of it.
Zanzibar.

But when she arrived there, it was no longer
for her a vision of extravagant fancy. The sultan wasn’t the stuff
of legend, but a chimera of unimaginable proportions, who clutched
the tender being of her baby brother in his cruel fist. A fiend
whose obsessions were so unspeakable that no amount of pleading
would loose the stories from Rodrigo’s tongue.

Dressed as Arabs in flowing white robes, and
headdresses that covered their hair, Rodrigo and Gabrielle
traversed the main district of narrow alleyways and rough stone
squares where Arabs and Indians loudly peddled their wares. All
around them the sweet smell of cloves drifted in on the tropical
breezes. The sultan was planting cloves over most of the island and
exporting them to a spice-hungry world. It was proving to be a
surprisingly lucrative venture, giving him a great deal of
credibility in the European money markets. He’d reaped almost as
many profits from his first shipments of cloves as he’d made in the
same period trading slaves.

The heat was oppressive. Even Rodrigo’s
clothing clung to his skin. Dust and squalor were everywhere,
kicked up by sandals, circling in the breeze. The smells of exotic
spices overpowered the air like a woman too abundantly perfumed.
They passed warrens of buildings with massive, intricately carved
doors: Some of the most beautiful in the world, lavishly chiseled
from Burmese or Indian teak or jackfruit wood with fish, peacocks,
flowers, spices, and fruits. Some had heavy metal spikes jutting
out like the gangplank of a keep. Each door was symbolic of the
householder’s interests. Rectangular doors were Arabic; those with
round or gothic arches signified Indian possession. No two were
alike.

The slave market chilled Gabrielle. An open
square facing the beckoning blue of the ocean, it contained a long
stone slab for the exhibition of slaves, and a number of crude
granite posts fastened with rings where the human merchandise could
be chained. A small crowd was gathered as they passed—little more
than a handful of people. Gabrielle didn’t know if it was a slow
day, or if they’d arrived so late in the proceedings that most of
the customers had already gone home. A single slave was being
auctioned, an African woman of indeterminate age, with eyes sunken
in her face. The auctioneer yanked the robe from her to reveal her
body to the gaping assemblage. Her breasts were huge and hung
heavily, swaying as the auctioneer took her shoulders from behind
and shook her to better display his goods. Her hips were full and
ripe. He pointed, obviously expounding on what everyone could
see—this was a woman with limitless sexual potential. The bidding
started—in Arabic, Gabrielle thought, although she couldn’t be
sure—and soon the woman was bundled up in her robes again as her
new owner paid the coin. He then put a chain about her neck and
hauled her away.

They spent the afternoon watching the
sultan’s palace. All around it were guards armed with wicked
scimitars at the sashes of their robes. The men were huge and
threatening, obviously chosen for their ability to incite terror in
the sultan’s subjects. There seemed no end to them. Each story of
the building was safeguarded. Every door was barred by at least two
burly men. No one entered or exited the building without first
being questioned by the sentries. Gabrielle couldn’t understand
what they said, but their voices alone were enough to impose the
fear of Allah in a less-hardy soul.

“There’s a fair-skinned boy being kept in the
sultan’s chambers,” Rodrigo said. “That must be Cullen. And of
course, that would be on the top floor, where it’s hardest to
penetrate.”

“What’s your plan?” she whispered as they
watched one man being thrust up against the wall and searched, then
hauled off by a bulwark of a sentinel.

Rodrigo gripped her arm and pulled her away
from the scene. She resisted, dragging her heels in the dust.

“I have no plan,” he ground out between his
teeth. “We can’t get in.”

“What do you mean, can’t get in?”

“You can see for yourself. His fleet is in.
His personal guard is very much in presence here. We didn’t get the
lucky break I wanted.”

“Then we’ll wait till the fleet leaves.”

“As soon as the warning comes from Hastings,
it won’t leave. It will never leave again while we’re still
alive.”

Her spirits sank. But something caught her
attention. A couple of decrepit old men in rags were pleading with
the guards. In their hands they held out crude wooden bowls. With a
cursory nod, the doors were opened and they were ushered
inside.

“Those men got in,” she pointed out.

“They’re beggars. It’s against the sultan’s
religion to turn away the poor. He houses them for the night and
gives them food. But they’re kept in the basement, away from the
rest of the house. There’s no way we could get by the guards once
we were in.”

He began to walk through the narrow, crowded
streets.

“Then what are we going to do?” she
asked.

Turning, he motioned her to silence. “Don’t
let them hear your voice,” he growled. “Do you have any concept of
what they’d do to you if they knew who you were? A beautiful white
woman? They’d get a fortune for you on the block.”

She lowered her voice. “But what are we going
to do?”

“Nothing. We need time.”

He began to walk off again.

“Time?” She rushed behind him, struggling to
keep up with his hectic pace. “Time for what?”

“To gather men. And ships. We need to build a
navy to destroy the fleet, attack the palace, and get Cullen
out.”

“That will take too long. He could be dead in
the time it would take us to—”

“To do anything else would be suicide.”

They argued all afternoon. All through the
time they were seeking shelter at an inn. All through their meal of
spiced meat and turmeric rice. Gabrielle simply refused to accept
any postponing of her brother’s rescue. But nothing she said would
persuade Rodrigo to act.

Frustrated and angry, she took the bottle of
wine he’d provided, sloshed it into her goblet, and drank it down.
With the cup half empty, she was struck by an idea. She removed the
goblet, wiped the wine from her lips, and set it down.

“Let’s not argue anymore,” she said. “Here.”
She filled his glass and passed it to him. “Let’s forget it for
tonight. There’s nothing we can do now. Maybe you won’t be so
stubborn in the morning.”

When he glared at her, she smiled as if she’d
been teasing him. He softened a little and drank the wine.

“It’s not that I don’t want to get him out,”
he explained, more reasonably. “It’s just that we must do so with
caution.”

“With caution,” she repeated.
When her
brother’s life was at stake? Over her dead body!

She mustn’t capitulate too easily, or he’d
suspect her motives. To throw him off guard she said, “Perhaps
you’re right, after all. I’m not making any promises, mind, but I
shall consider the possibility. I was in a play once.
A Lady’s
Lesson
. Dreadful rubbish, before I was being considered for
decent parts. The heroine defied her husband and caused a great
deal of trouble for herself. You may well guess that a man wrote
the play. At the end she offered a rather pithy apology for her
stupidity in disobeying him. All about having learned her
lesson—hence the title. Rather a lot of rot, really, but if it will
make you feel better, I’ll offer up a private performance.”

By the time she’d stopped speaking, he was
smiling. She poured him another glass of wine. He came to take her
in his arms. She put a hand to his chest to halt him.

“Drink your wine,” she said. Then she took a
sip from her goblet, put her lips to his, and passed the wine into
his mouth.

Later that night, when Rodrigo was sleeping
off the three bottles of wine she’d managed to get into him, she
rose from their bed and silently took her Arab robes outside.
Moving out of hearing distance, she held the garment to the light
of the moon in calculation, then carefully ripped the robe in
several places. She had to make certain none of her womanly curves
would show, while at the same time making a convincing show of
wear. As Arab women were kept inside after dark, she could only
succeed by convincing them she was a man.

With that accomplished, she tossed the fabric
to the ground and stomped on it, grinding it into the dust. She
retrieved it, shook out the excess, then looked it over with a
critical eye. Retrieving one of the torn strips, she bound her
breasts flat against her and slipped the robe over her petticoat.
She tied her hair back in a makeshift turban, placed the headdress
on her head, and wrapped the remaining cloth around her hands to
hide their delicate lines. Then she took a small club and hid it in
the waistband of her tight petticoat, under the flowing robes.

Without a backward glance, she stole through
the bright moonlight, creeping down narrow alleys, trying to recall
the way. Twice she took a wrong turn and felt hopelessly lost
before she found a familiar landmark. Eventually, she came to the
sea. She stood for a moment, looking out over the deserted slave
market, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the cooling
breezes off the water. Palm trees rustled in the wind. Her robes
brushed softly against her legs. The silence hung like fog over the
night.

She took a moment to collect her nerve. For
an instant, she feared she couldn’t go through with it. It was too
daring. Suicide, Rodrigo had called it—he who was the most daring
of men. But he’d also said she possessed the courage of champions.
She couldn’t stand around while her brother was imprisoned by a
monster. The urgency to free him ate at her soul.