I couldn't resist asking, my voice cold with fear, "This Pasha. Is he your enemy?"
He replied, obliquely, "As it happens, he's my employer."
It was clear that neither hiding nor escaping were viable options. We rowed out, of our own accord, though my captain had an expression on his face that unsettled me, as if uncertain whether he were approaching his ally or his doom. I could see in the near distance that two boats from the enormous warship had crossed to the Sophie, and the men, dressed so queerly, in short breeches with bright wraps around their waists, open vests and turbans, were swarming the decks of both vessels.
As we approached, my captain said succinctly, "Take off your sash from your gown and put it over your head, as if you're going to Mass. Keep your eyes down. Don't speak unless you're spoken to. They don't care for women with spirit."
I obeyed as the Suleyman loomed. She was even more disturbing up close, the gun decks towering over us in the little boat. We climbed the rope lines up the side to the chains, and were led across the main deck by these same seamen to the captain's cabin at the stern, its entrance bedecked with turned wood and windows with squares of colored glass. We were then ushered, or perhaps the better word would be herded, inside. I couldn't quite believe I was onboard any sort of naval vessel.
There were no proper chairs in the cabin, but one long couch with cushions on a low dais, more cushions on the floor, and damask draperies hung about like my imagined idea of a bordello. In all, it was more like a receiving chamber for some potentate of the East, which I suppose it was.
The Turk was dressed as resplendently as his cabin, in gold and red brocade, with a coat running to the floor that was trimmed with gold braiding, and an absurdly high turban of a sort I'd never seen, conical in shape, a feather pinned to it with a gaudy pearl aigrette. I had little doubt this was the Kapudan Pasha, and the argument began the moment my captain, to my surprise, prostrated himself before him. I couldn't know then what it was to deal with them.
The Pasha was pointing to larboard, toward the Sophie. Clearly my uncle's vessel was the object of the debate. I thought perhaps he was being accused of taking something that by rights was theirs. A thing that had happened to him once before, I thought with a shiver.
He also pointed several times at me, shouting in a way that made me feel my ownership was not debated, but simply my presence. As if he'd been off dallying with a tart when he should have been at some task of greater import.
As the argument went on, I caught a few words, and thought I understood what had so outraged them, though I couldn't be certain. For more than two centuries the Ottoman Turks, mightiest empire of the East, had been allied with the French, a loose alliance built on mutual hatred, for both feared the power of the British and the Portuguese at sea. Unfortunately, Napoleon was a flash-fire man, a creature of incessant contrasts. This alliance had grown closer under Bonaparte, at first, who was dazzled by the Turks, and even French fashion had gone à la turque, with plumed turbans and shawls of their famed silk brocade.
But Bonaparte's mortal enemy, the British, ruled the waves, and in order to counter them, he'd invaded Egypt, choosing, through his own notorious willfulness, to overlook the inconvenient fact that Egypt was one of the jewels in the Ottoman crown.
As they argued with one another, I had no idea where things stood between the Turks and France at the moment. I knew from the newspaper on Martinique that a tense state of undeclared war had fallen between the two nations, one the diplomats were trying desperately to repair. And it seemed to me, from their last exchange, that my captain had been told to leave French merchant shipping alone, a command he had shrugged off, in the way of the Salé pirates. The small incident would probably have been shrugged off in its entirety, but it was his misfortune to have been caught out by such a high personage at such an inconvenient moment.
And despite the fact that, for the time being, I was virtually ignored, I felt certain my own fate hung by a very thin thread.
At one rather absurd point, my captain muttered defiantly, "American," several times, and each time he did the Pasha countered, pointing again and shouting, "France!" He'd said they were of a touchy disposition, and I still prayed God it was a tempest in a teapot. Until the teapot exploded.
The Pasha stepped up onto the dais, and with a final, brutal pronouncement, waved his bejeweled hand to one of the men nearby, who wore a long scimitar. He walked toward my captain still kneeling on the floor, and I knew what was going to happen. When he made a motion to withdraw it, my shout erupted, without thought.
"No!"
I couldn't quite believe the word had come from me. They don't care for women with spirit. And at that moment, I didn't give a tinker's damn. All I could see was my captain's head on the cabin floor.
Despite my lowly female state, everyone froze, turning startled eyes on me, as if wondering if I possessed some power or position of which they were unaware, that would explain how I could dare to be so brazen. I knew little of the Pasha's world, only myth and legend and the pathetically few things my uncle had told me of the status of women within it. And my captain's warning. Acting on pure instinct, I rushed forward and threw myself at the Pasha's feet, prostrating myself as if at prayer, fighting to keep my eyes down as often as possible, implying I was not worthy to look upon him.
His arrogant stance, his contemptuous examination of my damp hair and gown, and finally his dismissive wave of a hand, seemed clear enough; you are a piece of property, you are of no consequence, and you should shut your mouth before I shut it for you. Nevertheless I cried out, my shock over what was bound to happen overriding common sense.
"Pas morte!" I pleaded, several times. "Ne truer pas, mon seigneur." Not death, my lord.
He paused, studying me now in a way that disturbed me. As if he rather liked what he saw. With his age, his grotesque weight and even more unpleasant face, it gave me a shiver.
He waved one of the men to him imperiously, and their heads came together in a whispered conversation, obviously in reference to me, my identity, and my probable origin onboard the Sophie. Still, he seemed dismissive, somewhat disinterested. Until he heard one word.
Martinique. The Pasha raised a brow and asked that it be repeated, mulling it over in his mind. Then he turned back to me, his eyes curious.
"Hazirlamak," he said. I lifted cautious eyes, and he made an imperious gesture for me to get up. Then he stepped down and walked toward me, or rather waddled, and spoke, only a few words, in what was, without doubt, the worst, the most impenetrable French I have ever heard. But it was French, and he was flashing his few words before me, like the jewels he wore, obviously expecting me to be impressed. This sop to his vanity I gave over, with an astonished smile and a nod. What frightened me in that moment, was the fact that I was having such difficulty understanding him, considering what lay in the balance. He was not the sort I could ask to repeat himself.
"France? You are France?"
I bowed, still trying to keep my head low. I sensed that any pride on my part would not be tolerated.
"Yes, my lord Pasha. I am France."
He smiled, very slightly. Apparently I'd addressed him properly.
"You are Martinique France?"
I couldn't help the curious glance, but I lowered my eyes again at once.
"Yes, lord. Martinique France."
"Why here?" he asked, pointing toward the Sophie.
Slowly, very slowly, desperately avoiding any hint of condescension in trying to make myself understood, I replied, "Captive, my lord Pasha. Taken. I was going to a convent in Paris."
This word, 'convent,' he did not know, which didn't surprise me. I crossed myself, then opened my hands several times in the manner of opening a book, and said, "I was going to school in France, my lord. School."
The whispered conversation began anew, my homeland mentioned once more. I began to wonder if my little island, in the months of my absence, had, absurd as it seemed, done something to offend the m
ighty Ottoman Empire, for it was as if it were at the center of some sort of diplomatic incident.
Then the Pasha nodded, waving his pudgy hand toward me again. With that, the words were passed to one of the guards, who came to take me by the arm. Strange that my first instinct was to fight, and I did so, struggling to pull it out of his grasp. But one hard yank was all it took to clear my head. Whatever they intended doing with me, there was certainly nothing I could do to stop them, and if I tried, I was liable to find my own head rolling across that floor.
The Pasha then nodded to me, in a strange way, before he turned to glance at my captain, then snapped to the man holding the blade.
"Palamarla baglamak. Yirmi."
With that command, two of the guards came to his either side, lifting him, then my captain was hauled out the cabin door. He cast one glance back, and I wasn't certain what I read in it. Nor was I certain what was going to happen, until I saw the largest and broadest of the guards walk to one of the cabinets and remove a whip; the cat with nine tails. He was going to be scourged a second time. I would find later that the Turks, ever taken with the exotic, preferred their lash be made of hippopotamus leather, feeling it better rent the flesh. Carrying it, the guard strode out behind them.
Though I was still held by the arm, I turned to look out one of the larger panes of glass, one that was clear rather than red or blue. Several of the mates came forward and set a grate against the mizzen mast, just outside the stern windows. My captain was tied to it, standing spread-eagle. At once the lash fell, with a gut-wrenching sound I could hear clearly. By the fifth, I heard him scream. With that I shut my eyes tight, and didn't realize I was praying under my breath, a Hail Mary, over and over again, as if to shut out the bloodcurdling sound.
I had not intended to keep count, but somewhere inside every lash was absorbed, recorded, ciphered. Twenty. Half of what he'd endured before. It sickened me further when I realized, from the light in the Pasha's eyes as I turned, that he had wanted me to see, for as soon as the punishment was done I was led away, and this time, stunned by events, had the wisdom not to fight.
I was surprised by the cabin I was led to. Somehow, in my mind, I was expecting a set of chains in the dunnage below. Yet it was a pleasant berth, small but opulent, with the same draping cloth and cushions as the stern above. There was a tiny window with the same squares of colored glass, but I could see little from it, since the gangway of the deck outside it was crowded with seamen. Within the half hour, one of my trunks containing some of my things was tossed into the cabin after me, somehow putting a final stamp on my consignment. This time, when the guard left me, I heard it, since he made it quite deliberately, the sound of the cabin door being locked.
The shadows cleared from the cabin floor, the men on deck outside called elsewhere. I ran to peer through the window, facing away from the lee side toward the bay, and watched in the distance as my captain was rowed back to his ship, collapsed in the boat. I knew I would never see him again. How incomprehensible that, despite my own dire predicament, and his part in causing it, I felt a hollow, sickening lurch in my stomach over this intuitive certainty. Meanwhile, my father's coffee, and everything in both holds, was being off-loaded to this ship.
As I had been. I was now the property of the Padishah Sultan, Guardian of the Sublime Porte, Allah's Shadow on the Earth.
The End
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