Shadow of the Corsairs

by Elizabeth Ellen Carter

  The door opened and three men walked in. Two of them she recognized from before – English sailors from one of the trading ships; the other was a stranger from Africa. Normally, she would practice her English and make small talk with them, although she didn’t know their names.

  Today, she acknowledged them with lift of their head and, seeing they were content to browse and talk amongst themselves, she turned back to Cettina who was openly eyeing the masculine trio.

  She leaned in to whisper. “Perhaps I was wrong about you, eh? You like working so you can see fine specimens, and perhaps have your pick.”

  “Cettina!” Morwena hissed, looking worriedly toward the group. They’d heard. All of them.

  The brown-haired one was a gentleman; he studiously pretended, as did their new companion, not to have heard. The other one, the blond-headed man with the gold earring, flashed a flirtatious smile toward them.

  Oh, if only the ground would swallow her up right now...

  He approached the desk.

  “How are you today, Miss Gambino?” he said in English. Cettina just about swooned. She didn’t speak the language, so all of a sudden it was exotic.

  “I am well, thank you for asking,” Morwena replied, hoping she got all the words in the right order. The fair-haired pirate smiled, so she must have done so.

  “Do you have any word on when the barrels of varnish are due to arrive?”

  It was a straightforward question, again delivered in English, but his tone of voice was low and flirtatious. Morwena glared at him. She knew he spoke Sicilian fluently, but it was clear he was putting on an act for Cettina.

  Morwena made a big show of pulling out her order book and searching for the order. “Not until next month,” she said in Sicilian, “just as I told you when you ordered last week.”

  Cettina’s face dropped. The pirate’s companions did their best to hide their amusement.

  “Until then.” The Englishman bowed and left. The tall African nodded his farewell, but not before he gave her a smile that might also have been an apology for his friend’s behavior. The other one, the Englishman with light brown hair whose Sicilian had improved immeasurably over the past twelve months, paid for a selection of hand planes and steel rasps, thanked her, and then joined his shipmates who waited outside.

  They lingered outside the window a moment, looking in. Morwena waved, just to let them know she could still see them. When they moved on, she lightly slapped Cettina on the side of the arm.

  “You embarrassed me in front of customers!”

  “You still made the sale, so it what does it matter?”

  “It matters because this is our living.”

  Cettina returned a blank look. Morwena groaned in frustration and put the order book away.

  “You’re lucky you can speak some English,” Cettina said, changing the subject. “If I could speak English, I would tell the uomo dai capelli biondi that he is handsome.”

  “He also speaks Sicilian, you know.”

  “Does he now? And with such good looking companions, too. Perhaps you’d like a shop assistant?”

  Morwena wondered whether it was worth reminding Cettina that she was engaged to be married, but she saw the tease in her friend’s eyes. Money and family woes were making her far too serious. It had been too long since she had gone out to enjoy herself.

  “I wish I could go out with you today,” Morwena confessed. “But I don’t know when papa will return.”

  Cettina patted her hand. “If only he hadn’t fallen out with your brothers.”

  Yes, indeed.

  Morwena got out from behind the counter and embraced her friend.

  “You will be an old spinster maid if you do not watch out for yourself,” Cettina whispered. “You will be like my Aunt Bettina who is shriveled up because she did not choose marriage.”

  The door bell rang once more. Carmelo came through the door. His dark brown, curly hair was unruly and his clothes didn’t sit on him as well as they might, almost as if he’d outgrown them in the time it took to put them on in the morning. Compared to the three sailors who’d left the store, Carmelo seemed like a boy.

  She shook her head to rid it of her uncharitable thoughts.

  It had been weeks since she had seen him and that had been at one of the festivals. They had managed to find themselves alone, out of the way of the firelight, and they had kissed.

  She waited to see if there was still the look of desire in his eyes that he wore that night. There was not. The look he gave her was pleasant, but not one of craving.

  “Well, are you coming along?” he asked. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  “No, she’s not going,” Cettina announced. “Work, work, work, that’s all she ever does.”

  The young woman flounced over to Carmelo and placed her hand on his arm.

  “We’ll have fun together, won’t we?”

  Morwena stuck her tongue out at Cettina, a childish gesture indeed, but so too was trying to make her jealous.

  Her friends departed, leaving her alone in the shop once again with only the steady tick-tick-tick of the clock from upstairs keeping her company.

  Porca Miseria...

  She gritted her teeth to stop self-pitying tears from falling.

  Her mama would not have wanted her to cry. She closed her eyes and tried to recall her mother’s features. Everyone said she looked like her, but her mother was a sweet-natured woman. Her great-grandmother had been a foreigner, English or Welsh, something like that, which is how she ended up with a name like Morwena.

  The spit and vinegar that made her unmistakably Sicilian she inherited from her father. But his fire was beginning to dim.

  The clock upstairs on the mantel chimed one o’clock. Thomasso had yet to return.

  Morwena screwed her eyes shut and let out an inelegant yawn. She opened them once again and they fell on the ledger. If she could at least scrape together two ducats from their debtors it would be enough to buy food for the month and to begin to pay back their creditors.

  She examined her list. Catalano, D’Amico, Geraci, Messina... she tapped a fingernail beside the name Geraci. They were one of the smaller timber merchants, but they were always reliable, even if they needed a nudge every now and again. She could use the excuse of visiting Senora Geraci and asking for her recipe for arancini, then happen to mention casually that times were tough...

  At least it would be a start. She closed the ledger book and slipped it under the counter next to the cash box and recalled Cettina’s visit and the sailors. The Englishman’s purchase was her largest all morning.

  Morwena bolted the shop door and put up the sign to say the store would reopen after lunch. She made her way upstairs.

  Brown hair and his pretty blond friend were not the only Englishmen in Sicily. There were English from Naples who now called Sicily home since the Frenchman Napoleon decided to expand his empire. They had money enough to purchase land to grow grapes for marsala. As farmers they would need all manner of goods.

  There was the beginning of an idea, she considered. And it could be a very profitable one.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mellesse had her bare back to him, her curly black hair pinned up with ivory combs he had brought for her following his last trip through Egypt. She turned to smile at him.

  They had been married for six years and, still, she was the most beautiful woman Jonathan had ever seen.

  “The little one sleeps, beloved.”

  He reached out a hand and slid it up her back until his fingers reached the curls at the nape of her neck. He’d been away so often recently that a month spent at his leisure at home with his family was a gift.

  Mellesse settled herself in the bed and reached for him. Jonathan lowered his lips to hers and drank deeply.

  “And I’m telling you, whistling a tune will not bring on a storm.”

  Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut, hoping and praying that if the two men who had just walked into the crew quarters wo
uld only shut up, he could continue to enjoy his dream and see Mellesse’s eyes once more. If he dreamed deeply enough, he might even see the faces of his beautiful daughters.

  “Then why do we say it? There has to be some kind of truth in it because every other ship I’ve sailed on believed it.”

  “Then maybe Captain Hardacre is the devil himself – did you ever think of that?”

  The only devils were the ones in the quarters with him right now. They had broken the spell. Jonathan was now wide awake. He sat up, trying to keep his balance in the hammock. The deck prisms glowed bright, but the wall lanterns were unlit, telling him it was daylight.

  The two sailors were bristled and one of them stifled a yawn; the sounds on deck above them told Jonathan there was a change of watch.

  “Sorry, guv, forgot you were in ’ere.”

  Although many of the crew knew he spoke some English, they seemed most often to address him in Sabir – the Mediterranean lingua franca, a mix of pidgin Italian, Greek, Arabic, Portuguese, and French.

  Jonathan nodded and searched for the right words in English as his feet hit the floorboards. “Is the captain on the deck?”

  The question was answered with a nod. Jonathan gave another nod of acknowledgement, just as he would when dismissing one of the court officials, and left the crew quarters.

  It had been nearly a month since his escape, not that he could recall much of it. He had been shown a hammock and he fell into it and slept for nearly two days. Since then, Jonathan reflected on how strange it was that ordinary activities had extraordinary effects. He could barely finish a meal, then, when he did, all he wanted to do was sleep it off. At least the skin on his wrists and ankles was now fully healed thanks to the salve the man, Giorgio, had used on him.

  He was pleased to have walked some of the streets of Palermo before the Terpsichore had sailed yesterday. Who knew when he might have the opportunity to travel so far north again? He liked the city. Its buildings told the story of centuries, the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Byzantines, the Moors, the Normans...

  A man could spend decades learning about such a place. But, for now, the limit of his exploration was a few streets and the Terpsichore. The ship seemed seaworthy enough, but it looked tired. Then again, his experience with boats was limited to small ones that plied Lake Tana.

  A shaft of light from an open hatch nearly blinded him. He squinted and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the sunshine.

  He emerged from the forward hatch and looked up at the towering masts and the billowing sails. The ship was larger than he had first thought it was, although not as large as some of the slave ships he had seen since his capture. Looking about, he thought the deck was deserted but, as the breeze shifted, he could hear the sound of voices and smell the tang of shellac and turpentine.

  The deck shifted as the vessel cut through a wave, but Jonathan kept his footing effortlessly. He found three of the crew working together, one of them with a large broom-like object wiping the timbers until they gleamed; the others were on their hands and knees, scrubbing at the old and, no doubt, flaking varnish.

  “Ahoy there, Mr. Afua!”

  Jonathan looked around and saw no one. Then he looked up.

  Hanging by one arm over a boom with a broad grin across his face, Kit Hardacre reminded Jonathan of a Vervet monkey he had as a pet when he was a child. He watched as Hardacre hauled himself atop the boom and, with arms outstretched, walked along it like some kind of balance beam. At last, he took a leap to grab one of the shrouds and clambered down it, picking his time to leap, just as the deck fell away through the trough of a wave.

  Only part monkey. Also part cat...

  “Nice of you to join us, Your Excellency.”

  Jonathan had forgotten he had first introduced himself by his family’s court title. No one else had mentioned it, so he had assumed the title meant nothing to the crew. But Hardacre knew its meaning... Jonathan considered he could choose to take offense – or he could see if Hardacre could take as much as he gave.

  “For a moment,” Jonathan said, following his earlier line of thought, “I didn’t know whether I was on a ship run by men or monkeys.”

  Hardacre laughed. “You know what? We might be a bit of both.”

  The captain looked up, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled. “Nash, you lazy bastard, get your bones down here now!”

  Jonathan looked to where Hardacre had yelled. He could barely distinguish one man from another of the five up toward the top of the main mast, but one of them reacted and started down.

  Insults seemed to be the currency here, and no one seemed to mind.

  “Now that we’re in friendlier waters, we have a bit of time for some spit and polish. The Terpsichore isn’t looking at her best. But the poor ole girl is in a hell of a lot better condition than when we first found her.”

  “Found her?”

  Hardacre shrugged.

  “The previous owners didn't take good care of her. But we're seeing to that.” Hardacre then raised his voice. “Aren't we, boys?”

  The question elicited an enthusiastic “aye” from the men working on the deck.

  “What exactly are you? You can’t be traders – you sneak into Bagrada under navy cannon fire and yet this is not a navy ship.”

  “Not in the recognized sense,” Hardacre conceded.

  “Not in any recognized sense,” Elias chimed in, joining them.

  “So, you're pirates.”

  Jonathan knew he should have been appalled by the revelation. They were pirates, criminals – and yet it seemed fitting, somehow, that he had fallen so low.

  Oh Mellesse, what would you make of this?

  “We like to consider ourselves virtuous pirates,” said Hardacre, not at all offended by the label. “All of us here have been affected in one way or another by the Barbary Corsairs, and all of us have agreed to play our own part in stopping them.”

  “A private navy then. How many ships do you have?”

  A gale of laughter erupted among the men nearby and Jonathan struggled to work out what was so amusing about his question

  “We're a navy of one, Mr. Afua,” said Elias, the only person not to have laughed. “Over the past three years we've – how shall I put it? – traded up.”

  “At the point of a sword.”

  Hardacre shrugged, unconcerned. “A sword, a gun, a cannon – we're not particular.”

  “You'll have to forgive our unconventional approach, Mr. Afua,” said Elias, again the voice of reason, “but with Europe riven by war, governments are slow to respond to threats and a more direct approach appears to be yielding results.”

  Captain Hardacre had apparently had enough of the conversation. He cupped his hands together and yelled to the crew. “Back to work, men; we'll reach Catallus tomorrow!”

  For the first time, Jonathan realized he was surrounded by nothing but sea. He'd never traveled so far off shore before. Most of the work done by Ludwig Gottleib was on land, conducting surveys of rivers and landforms along the Nile. His beloved Ethiopia seemed so far away and Mellesse even more so.

  The thought was a knife in his gut. The sound of his daughters' screams suddenly filled his head. The sight before his mind’s eye was of his terrified wife being dragged away by slavers, the sound of her screams in his head brought him close to vomiting. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his neck into his shirt.

  “Whoa, there!” said a voice.

  Jonathan concentrated on his breathing and willing away the dark spots before his eyes

  “Giorgio!” called another. “Get a litter.”

  “He needs to be out of the sun.” Jonathan recognized this voice as belonging to Elias.

  “He's African, he's used to the sun.”

  “You saw his wounds, he was grievously mistreated."

  He sucked in a lungful of air, then another one like bellows stoking a fire, and his temper ignited. “Don't talk about me as if I'm not here!”

/>   His vision returned and now he looked in the faces of a dozen European men. The crew fell to silence. Even Hardacre's face had sobered, turned to stone in fact, making him look less like a youth. He winced. These men had shown him nothing but kindness and respect over this past month; they didn't deserve his anger.

  “Forgive my outburst,” he said quietly.

  “It’s nothing that can't be forgiven over a decent meal and a restorative ale,” said Hardacre, the brightness in his face returning. Jonathan didn't feel like eating, not with his stomach churning as it was. But it would be a hostile act to refuse hospitality, and Jonathan was a diplomat first and foremost.

  Still unsteady, he followed Hardacre and Elias down the aft stairs to the most spacious cabin of the ship. It was filled with light from stern windows that fell across a table strewn with paper and ledgers.

  Right there in front of him was the journal he had taken from Kaddouri's records room.

  He reached for it, then stopped. His hand hovered.

  “Family?” Hardacre asked and not unkindly.

  “My wife, Mellesse.” Jonathan hesitated a moment. “They took her away more than six months ago. I haven't seen her since the night the slavers came and killed my baby daughters.”

  Hardacre and Elias said nothing. Jonathan was glad of that. The last thing he wanted was the burden of other men’s sympathy since he wasn’t sure he would bear the weight of his own grief as well. He withdrew his outstretched arm.

  Gottleib had been captured that night, too, and, as far as he was aware, only he and the German ended up in Kaddouri's slave markets. Perhaps the other men and Mellesse had been shipped away immediately. He didn't know, but it was only the fate of his wife that interested him.

  The man called Giorgio bustled his way through and placed platters of fresh fruits, cured meats, and preserved vegetables on the table. Another man followed behind with a large pot. The aroma reached Jonathan long before the man made an appearance. It was coffee, he could just about taste it from the smell. When he’d joined Hardacre’s crew, it had been so long since he'd had a cup, he'd forgotten what a wonderful elixir it was. Even a month later, the smell of it seemed to permeate his bones, giving him strength where he had none. He found his spirit returning, reminding him that he was nobility.