Bahir had it in his head to be a whoreson this evening. At the completion of prayers, he had English fill the water barrels beside the house. Not a duty English minded because it meant a trip outside the walls to the well at the end of the street. After that Bahir had him sweep the courtyard within and then bring his broom and follow him to the master’s private courtyard.
Night had fallen over Cairo. Above him the velvet black sky threw out a glorious mantle of stars. Countless needle pricks in the vast fabric of the night. With night came the sudden cold, but English did not mind the cold. At times, when he lay on his bare pallet in the slaves’ quarters the chill on the air took his mind to a white blanket of snow, and blurred faces huddling around great hearths.
“Bahir.” The master greeted the giant eunuch.
“Sahib.” Bahir bowed low. With skin as dark as night, Bahir’s oiled scalp shone in the flickering oil lamps.
“We must speak.” Master gestured to him. “We should send him away.”
Both gazes swung his way and English went about his business of sweeping.
“That one.” Bahir snorted like a giant bull. “The English does not speak our tongue. One too many blows to the head with steel.”
Except English did speak their tongue. He kept his head over his broom. The gentle whisk whisk over the mosaics broke the silence. Bahir used the French tongue with him and, in a small rebellion from which he drew a measure of satisfaction, English guarded his secret understanding of Arabic.
“You heard the news from the suq?” With a groan, Master sank into the cushions. For a man not accustomed to resting his ass on the floor, the Arabic custom of cushions before low tables played havoc with the knees.
Bahir poured the fragrant jasmine tea into cups so fine they caught the light behind them. “Amadore was not well liked, but his reputation was unblemished.”
“They grow bolder.” The master sighed and broke off a piece of basbousa. Once over Ramadan, English had been given the sweet treat. “But there is more.”
Bahir folded his hands in front of him and waited.
“The news has not yet reached the streets, but they killed Amadore’s family as well.”
Bahir bowed his head. “Enna lillah wa enna elaihe Rajioun.”
“God save us all.” Master chewed his basbousa and stared into the night. “It was brutal they say.”
When amongst those he trusted, Master dropped his piety and reverted to his former religion.
“The Sultan does nothing.” Master drank his tea. “He cannot risk being seen to take sides in this conflict.”
Bahir refilled his tea and stood back again, huge hands folded before him. “Your mind is troubled, Sahib.”
“They will come for me.” Standing, Master brushed crumbs from his tunic. “Someone will remember me as the Genovese merchant Pietro D’Onofrio. We can no longer pretend it is not so.”
“You cannot be sure of this,” Bahir said. “Cairo has known you as Alif Al-Rasheed for longer than twenty years.”
“People have long memories. Amadore lived here before I even arrived. He showed me how to go on in those first days.” Hands clasped behind his back, Master strolled to the pond. “It is not for myself that I worry and I cannot take the chance I may be right.”
“Alya.” Bahir nodded.
Alya. English moved closer, his broom stirring the dust beneath the arbor that provided shade in the midday heat. Moonlight through the vines cast ghostly shadows on the mosaicked floors.
“She is different,” Master said. “We both know this. God forgive me, but I raised her that way.”
“What is it you wish from me, Sahib?” Whispers spoke of the master having purchased Bahir from a harem in Acre and bringing him to Cairo. Stronger than an ox and able to swing his curved blade with deadly precision, his lack of ballocks had not tamed Bahir any.
“Take her away, Bahir.”
English stopped sweeping. Aware Bahir’s gaze had swung his way, he bent as if to pick something up from the ground.
“Sahib?” Bahir strode closer to the master. “Take her where? To Damietta?”
“Further.” Master raised his head and met Bahir’s hard look.
“Acre? Damascus?”
“Further.” Dropping his head, Master slumped. “Take her back to my kind, my old friend. Take her where her strangeness will not stand out so much.”
“Will they welcome her?” Bahir ran his hand over his face. “She has not been raised one of them.”
English worked his broom into the corners so he could stay and hear the rest of their conversation.
“I am aware.” Master shrugged. “But at least I give her this chance at life.”
“But she is your daughter. The moon in your night.”
“She is my everything.” Master cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. “I will remain here. I have not in me the strength to begin my life a third time.” When Bahir would speak, he held up his hand. “Nay. I am decided in this. I will remain here. At the least it will take them time to realize she is gone.”
Bahir stood, staring at the master.
“You are decided in this?” Bahir said.
“I am.” Master nodded. “I have a ship waiting for you at Alexandria. It will take you wherever you need to go. I have loaded it with everything you will need. Most of my wealth goes with you.”
* * * *
His girl on the wall was leaving. Bahir was commanded to take his light away. English laughed at his own idiocy. A slave had no place in his life for bright dreams.
“Hssst!”
English stopped. Huge protruding eyes holding his gaze as she chewed her cud, a she-camel stared back at him. The master’s fears must be affecting his mind. Next, he would see haunts in the deep shadows around the beast pens.
Louder this time, more insistent. “Hssst!”
The habits of a lifetime had him reaching for a weapon that had not ridden his hip for three years. He bent and picked up a rock. “Who is there?”
“Henry?”
The beast pens dimmed, and English reached to steady himself on an upright. A name he had not heard spoken in many years and a voice that drove lance-like into the raw center of him.
“God’s balls, Henry, are you just going to stand there?”
His mother tongue came unbidden to his lips. “Newt?”
“Who else would it be?” A figure emerged from the shadows. “What other poor sod would think it a fine idea to hide out with these disgusting beasts.”
“Newt?” Dear God, he might unman himself and faint. English dug his fingers into the wooden upright and tried to right the tilting world about him.
“They spit.” Newt scrubbed globs of partial digested cud from his tunic. Three years had changed much about the lad. Taller, broader, his face grown finely hewn. His hair hung longer, possibly concealing those ears that stuck out from his head like jug handles.
“Newt.” English drank in all the details, small and large about the man standing before him. A man he had once called friend, loved as he loved his blood brothers. A strange urge rose within English. Laughter! It came from his throat rusty and disused and he hung on tighter to his support.
“Henry.” Newt beamed at him. He held out his arms and then thrust them back. “It took me long enough to find you.”
“Newt.” It could not be possible to have Newt standing before him. This was a memory from another time come to taunt him, come to break him. English stepped away.
“Aye, that is my name.” Sharp gaze sweeping English from head to toe, Newt frowned. “Are you addled?
How many times in the past had Newt asked him that? Worn that same expression, a small part quizzical for the most part scornful. “It is you.”
“Aye, Henry, it is me.” Newt glanced about them. “Can we find somewhere less open to speak? That big ebony whoreson has eyes in the back on his head.”
“Bahir.” Still not sure his eyes did not deceive him, he led Newt behind the beast pens into his secret place. The same place he used to watch his girl on the wall. Not for much longer.
Newt crowded into the shadows beside him. Now at least as tall as he, their shoulders brushed and fought for space.
The enormity of it hit Henry and he hauled Newt into a rough embrace.
Newt stiffened. It was not his way, but then relaxed into his hold. Fastening an arm around his back, Newt pounded his shoulder blades. “Sweet Jesu, it is good to see you, Harry.”
Henry scrunched his eyes closed. He would not disgrace himself with tears, but they built anyway and he held on to Newt as much to hide his disgrace as to assure himself he had not imagined the man.
After a while Newt disengaged. He stepped back, cleared his throat and straightened his filthy tunic. “I have come to take you home.”
“Home?” He did not even know what home meant. After he heard the news that Frederick’s army had withdrawn, leaving him here, cut off from his home, he had forced that word away. “You have come to take me home?”
“By the rood, Henry. You are addled for certain.” Newt shook his head. “Why else would I be here?”
“I know not.” He might go home. Swift on the heels of the hope came the fear, washing away the hope. He had learned not to hope. Hope brought with it only the pain of being dashed and trampled beneath uncaring feet. “I will never go home.”
Newt gaped at him. “Aye, you will.”
“Nay.”
“Aye.” Newt’s face grew taut. He stepped forward. “You will go home because I am here to fetch you.”
“I cannot.” He could not risk it. This long he had survived on the ruthless annihilation of hope.
“Aye, you will.” Newt shoved him. Hard enough to send him crashing into the wall. “You will go home because I promised Roger I would find you and bring you home.” Another shove sent him back against the wall. “You will go home because Sweet Bea will still be crying for you or I do not know your sister. And you will go home, or I will die getting you there, because we both know I failed you.”
English pressed his bruised back to the wall. He would like to explain but he had not the words. In this land, he had lost himself. In this place of a new god, strange food and customs he had learned at the end of the whip, Henry had become English. He had no more god, no more hope. He was nothing more than a slave. So, he shrugged and said again, “I cannot.”
“By God’s aching blisters, you will go home, Harry.” Newt hawked and spat. “You cower against the wall if you wish, but Newt has a plan. And if Newt must drag your ass all the way across that perishing desert to do it. You. Will. Go. Home.”