The Sultan's Daughter (51 page)

‘Have you no fear that he may attempt to take you against your will?' Roger asked anxiously.

She kissed him. ‘You need have no fear of that, dear love. As I am the daughter of a Sultan he had to provide me with my own suite of apartments, and custom forbids him to enter them. Before the war it would have been a different matter. Then he was virtually an independent ruler and all Syria bowed the knee to him. Married or single, I would not have risked a visit to his city of Acre. But now he is dependent on the Turkish forces and the goodwill of the Porte to maintain himself against the French. It is the right of my cousin, the present Sultan, to give me again in marriage to whom he will, and he certainly would not give me to a Pasha who in the past has flouted his authority. For Djezzar to force me into marriage without my cousin's consent, or molest me, would mean risking his whole future. Being an ambitious man, you may be sure he will not do that.'

With her head on Roger's chest they dozed for a while, then she roused and began gently to caress him. For a few minutes he pretended to be asleep then, with a laugh of delight, crushed her to him. For a third time their mutual passion carried them to Paradise. Then with long, happy sighs, they lay still.

Soon afterwards the first flush of dawn showed through the arrow-slit window. With great reluctance Zanthé sat up and said that she must leave him, but before doing so she gave him most careful instructions to guide his behaviour during the coming day. After another score of lingering kisses and endearments they tore themselves apart.

A few hours later the old negress, Gezubb, roused him from a heavy sleep. With her she brought the garments and sandals of a eunuch. Having washed himself and put on the clothes, he accompanied her downstairs. Zanthé had told him that no one in the seraglio understood French and that he should pretend that he knew no Turkish or Arabic. He could not then be called on to answer awkward questions and, when he did have to appear to have picked up a few words
of Turkish, he must try, as far as possible, to imitate the high, piping voices of the eunuchs.

The enormously fat Chief Eunuch was a lazy, normally good-tempered man. He showed no hostility to Roger and, by signs, set him to clear out the bird cages in the aviary. It was not a particularly unpleasant task and occupied him for most of the morning. But when he had finished, two other eunuchs cornered him and, with cries of ‘Christian dog', set about him with their heavy, leather belts.

He knew that if he seriously injured either of them it would be certain to cause trouble and put Zanthé in a difficult situation; so he defended himself as best he could without striking out. Grimly he put up with quite a beating but, before it was over, by good luck, Zanthé came into the room.

Immediately they caught sight of her they stopped, but with her tawny eyes blazing she walked purposefully towards them. Seizing each of them by an ear, she smashed their faces one against the other with all her strength and, from his night's experience, Roger knew that her splendid limbs were as strong as those of many a man. As she continued to bash their heads together they set up a shrill yelling, which brought all the others running into the room.

Letting her victims go, Zanthé pointed at Roger then cried to the assembled group in tones of fury, ‘The Roumi is not for you. He is here as my slave and plaything. Should any of you dare to lay a finger on him I'll have you bastinadoed'. Then, turning on Roger, she slapped him twice hard across the face.

That evening, as a further demonstration of her apparent feelings towards him, she made him turn somersaults in front of her divan. Each time his legs were in the air she jabbed a bamboo pole into his side, causing him to fall in a flurry of arms and legs on to the hard floor.

When she came to his room again at midnight she implored his pardon; but he assured her that none of his falls had hurt, and that such treatment was just what was needed to convince the eunuchs that tormenting him and making him a laughing stock for her women gave her pleasure.

Again they spent the greater part of the night giving free rein to their passionate delight in one another, or lying embraced
in a blissful doze. Before she left him they devised other ways in which, without causing him any serious pain, she could appear to chastise and humiliate him.

For more than a month matters continued in much the same way, except that during the daytime Zanthé gradually relaxed her severity towards him. The unspoken excuse provided by her to the eunuchs for so doing was that no one else in the seraglio understood French, whereas Roger could read the books in that language which she had brought from Cairo in her baggage. In the mornings he continued to clean out the cages in the aviary and later in the day spent hours reading aloud to her.

Night by night, after they had revelled together, she gave him such news of the siege as reached her. During April the French succeeded in bringing their trenches right up to the walls and exploding a number of mines under them. However, in the middle of that month their efforts against the city had been greatly reduced, owing to the approach of relieving forces. A body of troops, said to be commanded by General Junot, had been detached and had inflicted a heavy defeat on a Turkish force near Nazareth. Then, a week later, Bonaparte was reported to have left his headquarters and to have gained a victory over the larger part of the Army of the Pasha of Damascus.

After that the French attacks had been resumed in full force and they had been greatly strengthened by the success of some ships from Alexandria in landing six heavy siege cannon near the foot of Mount Carmel. On the 25th two more towers had been brought down and most desperate fighting had followed. But the Mamelukes, Janissaries and British marines were holding, with desperate valour, the breaches that had been made in the crumbling walls.

Each day the sounds of the fighting grew nearer and, on May 1st, Djezzar's great fortress palace was attacked. Through the thunder of the cannon and the rattle of musketry, the battle-cries and screams of the wounded could be clearly heard. The French broke into the palace garden, but were driven out by Djezzar's renowned Albanian guards. On the two succeeding days there was a lull, but on the 4th another tower was blown up by a mine and the French
launched a most determined assault through this new breach they had made in the defences. There was fighting in the streets which went on for three days; but Sir Sidney Smith landed his sailors, armed with pikes and cutlasses. The British tars turned the tide of battle and, once again, the French were driven back.

On the 7th great news came in for the defenders. The other Army that had been formed for the relief of Acre was coming by sea from Rhodes and the Fleet carrying it had been sighted. There was tremendous excitement in the city, and by afternoon the Turkish Fleet could be seen on the horizon. But it was watched with almost unbearable suspense, because a complete calm had fallen and the boats that had been sent out to tow it in could draw it towards the harbour at no more than a mile or so an hour.

At midnight on the 8th Zanthé came to Roger's room as usual; but instead of giving him her normal, loving greeting she flung herself, weeping, on his breast, her eyes distended by fear.

‘What is it, my love?' he cried, clutching her to him and turning her lovely tear-stained face up to his. ‘What has happened! Have we been discovered?'

‘No,' she sobbed, ‘no, but Fate has dealt us a most terrible blow. An oared galley from the Turkish Fleet made harbour this evening. The Commander brought a despatch for Djezzar. It seems that he wrote to Constantinople, asking a reward for having defended Acre so valiantly. My cousin has sent a
firman
granting his request. It … it was that he should have me for a wife. And he will brook no delay, I am to marry him tomorrow.'

It was seven weeks since Roger had been captured, and for the greater part of that time he had been Zanthé's lover. The other inmates of the seraglio had become used to him and, since he had become her reader, accepted that she should no longer treat him harshly; so his days passed pleasantly. His period of convalescence and the lazy life he had since led provided the best possible conditions for him to meet Zanthé's desire for him with a continued passion as great as her own. Also, since she found a thousand questions to ask him about France and other countries in which he had travelled and he never tired of hearing her talk of the strange life led in the great seraglio at Constantinople, the hours of the nights they spent together never seemed long enough.

Even had he been given a chance to escape, he would have thought twice before taking it. Any information with which he could have furnished Sir Sidney Smith would have been hopelessly out of date, so there was no duty that his conscience urged him to perform. As long as the fact that he had not been castrated remain undiscovered he was safe, and he was quite content to wait upon events.

Up till now Bonaparte had not suffered a single defeat in Italy, Egypt or Syria, so it seemed most unlikely that he would fail to take Acre. The reinforcements brought by the Turkish Fleet might enable the city to hold out longer; but the French had breached the walls in many places and, it was said, so widely in one part that an assault of fifty men abreast could pass through the gap. In view of this Roger still believed that any day might see them victorious and the only anxiety he felt was about what might happen on the day of their victory.

If Djezzar's palace were stormed, Zanthé and he might become involved in some wild
mêlée
in which one or both of them might be killed or injured. It was certain, too, that the city would be given over to the sack and, if they were caught with the other women and the eunuchs, it might prove difficult for him, with his appearance as a eunuch, to protect Zanthé from the brutal and licentious soldiery. But his quickness of mind had always served him well at times of crisis. He was optimistic, therefore, about their surviving those few hours of danger and succeeding in convincing the attackers that he was a French officer who had been captured. Once they accepted him as Colonel Breuc, Zanthé would be safe from molestation and, as soon as the fury of the sack had died down, he intended to take her to Bonaparte's headquarters.

He would have greatly preferred to take her to Sir Sidney Smith; but his only means of protecting her during those dangerous hours would be by declaring himself a Frenchman and, once the city was in the hands of the French, it would be next to impossible to get her away to a British ship. It was owing to this assessment of the probable course events would take that, much as he loved her, he had decided against confiding to her the truth about himself. Since there seemed no escape from again taking up the role of one of Bonaparte's aides-de-camp it was better not to burden her with the knowledge that he would be a spy in the camp of his enemies, at least until he saw a good prospect of getting her safely away from the French Army. Where he would take her when he did get that chance he had not yet even considered. It must depend on unforeseeable circumstances which would arise in the future. In the meantime his mind had been almost entirely obsessed with her beauty and charm, and he was content to remain a prisoner for the sake of the hundred delights she so willingly afforded him.

But now the jealous gods had launched a thunderbolt which threatened to put a swift and permanent end to their happiness. Not only was his beautiful Zanthé to be torn from him; she was to be forced to give herself to, of all people, Djezzar Pasha, that monster whose name throughout the whole Middle East was synonymous with cruelty. The
thought made Roger's heart contract. A sudden nausea rose in him. Nearly sick with rage and apprehension, he cried aghast:

‘It cannot be true! The very idea fills me with horror. Are you quite certain that this is not a trick?'

‘Dear love, I am certain,' she moaned. ‘The Chief Eunuch of Djezzar's own seraglio brought … brought the
firman
from the Sultan for me to see, and … and with it many rich presents of silks and jewels.'

‘Can you not flatly refuse to marry him?'

‘How can I? Any female of the Imperial Family is the Sultan's, to dispose of, and it is unthinkable that I, the daughter of a Sultan should set an example of defiance. As soon as Selim learned what I had done he would be forced to make an example of me. He would send an order for me to be strangled by the bowstring.'

‘To refuse would at least gain us time,' Roger argued, ‘It would take weeks for the news to reach Constantinople and an order for your execution to be conveyed to Acre. Meanwhile——'

‘No, no!' she cut him short. ‘It would gain us nothing. Djezzar has long desired me and he is not the man to wait on ceremony. Now that he has my cousin's consent he will take no refusal. He will have the Imam pronounce the words over us whether I will or no. Then if I resist he will whip me until I consent to perform all the bestial acts that the women of his seraglio have told me he demands of them.'

‘Then we must escape tonight.'

‘Oh, if only we could,' she sobbed. ‘But it is not possible.'

‘It is,' Roger insisted. ‘It must be. It would have been far easier to contrive had we had even a few days' warning. But we must do without. We'll manage somehow.'

‘I know you to be brave, but bravery is not enough,' she protested tearfully. They would catch us both and inflict some ghastly death upon you. It is my fate that I must suffer, but I'll not allow you to give your life to no purpose. You must remain here, continuing to pose as a eunuch. There is at least a chance that the French will take the city and you will be rescued before your imposture is discovered.'

‘Oh my sweet, courageous Zanthé!' He turned her face up
to his and kissed her tear-stained cheeks. ‘What sort of man do you take me for to think that I would give you up to that brutal sadist whilst skulking here in safety? It would, I admit, be next to impossible for me to escape alone. For you to do so alone would be equally difficult. But together I have good hopes that we may. You know the palace. You can judge at which exit we are likely to be faced with the fewest obstacles and guide me to it. I have the strength you lack to break down all but the strongest barriers. Provide me with a good weapon and, should our escape be opposed, I'll hack my way through half a dozen guards to carry you to safety.'