Falconer's Quest

by T. Davis Bunn

  They made an odd assortment the next morning, or so it seemed to Falconer as he entered the room and glanced around. Amelia Henning had taken the captain’s chair, dressed in her threadbare frock. Sunlight flooded through the great stern windows, illuminating the pinpoint of sadness at the core of her gaze. Yet this strange and lovely woman, who had not spoken a dozen words for days on end, who had initially refused to dine with the ship’s company, now smiled a greeting and bid them welcome in the Lord’s name.

  Reginald Langston, owner of a worldwide system of ship and trading, was seated beside the widow. Then Matt, then Bernard, then Soap. The wizened steward was clearly uncomfortable seated in the master’s cabin. Falconer found a place next to Soap. One of the barrel-chested sailors who had aided Falconer in Windmill Square was next. Another of the midshipmen made eight. Captain Harkness and Lieutenant Bivens stood at the corner chart table, their heads almost touching as they softly discussed tides and depths and wind.

  Amelia Henning looked at Falconer and asked, “Would you like to lead us in an opening prayer?” When he hesitated, she pressed gently, “A gentleman is seated among us this morning because of you. Prayer in such times is a recognition of God among us, John Falconer.”

  He invited the others to bow their heads. He spoke the words, and felt a stirring resonance within his own heart. When he lifted his head, he found Amelia Henning gazing at him. “My late husband,” she said, “may he rest in God’s eternal peace, often said that some of the finest confessions he had ever heard were spoken out of the depths of wounding confusion. Because only then did the strong among us come to accept their desperate need for God. Would you care to confess your own confusion, John Falconer?”

  Had he known this was where she was headed, Falconer might have refused to come. As it was, however, he found a faint yearning call rising within him. As though some part of him had wanted this very chance to speak, though his mind might have rebelled at the prospect. “My wife, Matt’s mother, passed away last winter,” he started, speaking to the floorboards by his boots. “For much of the time since then, my heart has been a stone. Many of my prayers have seemed so empty they have felt almost like fables. I prayed with Bernard yesterday because Mrs. Henning requested it. But I feel I did a disservice to him, because though I spoke of God’s abiding love, I felt it not.”

  To his surprise, it was Matt who spoke up then. “But you love me, Father John.”

  “Aye, lad. That I do. No question about that.”

  “The Good Book says God is love.”

  Amelia Henning spoke in a voice Falconer did not recognize. “It does indeed, young sir.”

  “If you love me, Father John, doesn’t that mean God is still close to you?”

  To that, Falconer had no answer.

  Amelia Henning asked the table at large, “Would anyone else care to confess a weakness, a need that remains unfulfilled, a wound that troubles them greatly?”

  “Aye, that I would, ma’am.” To their surprise, it was the young lieutenant who spoke. Bivens shifted around and opened his coat, revealing a sling. “Against the advice of both the skipper and Falconer, I insisted upon carrying my share of the gold yesterday. My injury from the storm has worsened to where I can scarcely lift a fork.”

  Harkness said, “I ordered him to shield the wing for a fortnight.”

  “Which means,” Bivens said, “I cannot accompany Falconer on his mission. I feel I have let down the brethren because of my stubborn nature.”

  Soap came to seated attention. “I’d count it an honor to go with you, sir.”

  “You have no idea what you’re saying,” Falconer replied. “Or what lies in store.”

  “Don’t matter a whit, sir. I’m your man.”

  Bernard Lemi said, “I would beg to be included in your company as well, sir. I have never been in battle, but I am known as a fine shot with both pistol and musket.”

  Amelia Henning softly tapped the table. “I suggest we leave further discussion of plans and weapons for when the lamp of prayer is not lit.”

  “Well said, madam.” Harkness stumped across the cabin. He directed Bivens into the one remaining chair and pulled over a footstool. He waved Soap back into his chair. “Well said indeed.”

  Amelia Henning said, “Would anyone else care to speak of unanswered need?”

  It was Reginald Langston who spoke up next. “All who know me realize I am a man of action. I love nothing more than a hard day’s work followed by a night of good friends, my family, and good cheer. I love life, I love a good table, I love my church. I have never been a man of great intelligence and it has never bothered me at all. I have given everything I have to whatever task is before me. Until this time, it has served me well enough.”

  His gaze had gradually lowered until his eyes rested upon the hands clasped on the table before him. “Yet now my power as a merchant and a man of action is brought to nothing. In the months leading up to my departure from Washington, my dear wife often slipped from our marriage bed so that her sobs would not wake me, or so she thought, as she mourned over her son. But my helpless state had already robbed me of sleep. I have been forced to learn what it means to do nothing but wait upon the Lord. And this act of waiting has been the hardest challenge I have ever faced. I have sought to study. At some times the words seem illuminated by my powerlessness. At others, my mind makes neither head nor tail of what I read. One moment I find peace, and the next I am so frustrated and worried my peace seems but a lie. And in those dark moments, my prayers…”

  Falconer found himself speaking for his friend, “They are but dust that falls from our lips.”

  Reginald sighed to his hands, and nodded once.

  In the silence that followed, a young boy’s broken voice struggled to shape the words, “I miss my mama.”

  Amelia Henning’s hand came to rest upon Matt’s. She cast a glance around the table, and when no one else spoke, she said, “You are all far too aware of my own troubles. Yet in the midst of my own dark hour, when my daughter seems lost to me…”

  It was the lady’s turn to stop and take a very hard breath. “I find I question many of my most cherished memories. I felt God leading me to remain in Africa and continue my late husband’s work. I have no family in America, no one to care for us or miss us while we are away. It was just Kitty and me, and my daughter loved Africa more than I, if that were possible. Yet in my darkest night since leaving my daughter in that foul dungeon, I have wondered if perhaps I listened to a different voice, one that spoke of selfish yearnings to remain where I was needed, where my life had meaning, and thus put my own daughter in grave peril.”

  A strong flame rose in Falconer’s chest. He clenched himself hard, bunched a fist, and pressed it fiercely onto his ribs. He was a man of the sea. A soldier. Such people as he were not brought to tears by a woman’s words.

  Amelia Henning went on, “God is showing me again what it means to be open in weakness. How to speak when I have no answers. When I am blinded with pain, and understand nothing that has happened to me, still I am called to choose.”

  Bernard Lemi took a breath that was midway between a gasp and a sob. He covered his eyes.

  “And this above all else I know,” Amelia Henning said. “God is here. With us. This day. Though He seems distant, though our weakness and our pain are all we might see.” She looked to the ceiling, far enough to where the tears were released. “Our God is here with us.”

  Chapter 22

  Hours were spent each day in meticulous planning and preparation. Perhaps Harkness insisted upon such discussions because he was to remain with his ship. But Falconer did not think that was the case. Harkness might skipper a merchant vessel, but he possessed a true leader’s eye for exactitude. They went through the plan in scrupulous detail. When they were finished, they did it again. By the third repetition, Falconer’s rough concept had been reformed into a strategy of stealth and possible success.

  The fourth morning after their departure for t
he north African coast, Harkness ended the now-daily prayer meeting by inviting the company to join him on the foredeck. Only Matt could not do so, as it was his assignment to stand watch. Lieutenant Bivens stared at the empty yellow wasteland beyond the passing shoreline and said, “I have heard tales of galleys rowed into battle by men chained to their oars.”

  Falconer watched Matt cluster with the other middies. They took a shot of the sun with a shared sextant and quarreled mildly over the calculations. “The rumors are true enough.”

  Bivens watched him intently. “How do you fight such a foe?”

  “Such vessels cannot carry the same weight of arms as we do,” Falconer replied. “Nor are they well disciplined. They strike when their foes are weak and flee before reinforcements arrive.”

  “That may all be true,” Harkness muttered, peering through his telescope at the southern vista. “But I’ll never let one of them draw to my windward side. With us relying on sails, they’d have me as trapped as a monkey in a barrel.”

  Together they stared across miles of water to the realm of yellow heat. The ocean met the shore in a series of steep hills, the sea of water giving way to a sea of sand. Falconer used Reginald’s telescope to study the terrain. The merchant’s spyglass was of etched brass and the outer rim circled in Spanish leather. The glass was the finest Falconer had ever used. Even so, he found no sign of life—not a tree, not a movement of any kind. Just sand and yellow rock and a rising ribbon of heat.

  Amelia Henning protested, “But we are not here to battle anyone. We are here to rescue our children.”

  Captain Harkness slapped his own spyglass shut. “We are also dealing with pirates, madam.”

  “And what, may I ask, do you mean, sir?”

  The captain turned from the desert to inspect the woman standing beside him. Harkness was as blunt in his features as his manner. His graying beard was chopped off like a spade. His features were sun-darkened and deeply lined. Falconer knew from Reginald Langston that the captain was forty-one years old. He looked sixty.

  Yet his eyes were as clear as illuminated crystal and his voice was gentle as he said, “I have been deeply affected by your lessons these past mornings, madam.”

  “Here, here,” Reginald agreed.

  “You have not merely overcome a grievous loss. You have turned this tragedy into illumination.”

  Amelia Henning dropped her gaze. “I have done very little, if anything, Captain.”

  “You have allowed God to work in you. You did as you have been urging us to do, to choose. Only then can God work in the midst of life’s chaos.” He paused a moment, then said, “Your husband, may his soul rest in eternal peace, was blessed by having you at his side.”

  The widow’s tone was very subdued. “You are telling me that I must not allow my fears and my distress to take control once more. I must trust you to do the best you can. The best anyone can.” She sighed. “You are right, of course.”

  The captain extended his spyglass and returned to inspecting the shoreline. “A wise woman indeed.”

  Bivens and Falconer spotted their goal at the same moment. The two cried, “There!”

  “I see it.” Harkness scowled. “The heat causes all the markings to swim so, I might as well be peering beneath the hull.”

  “Shall I order us closer to shore?” Bivens asked.

  “No, we’ve attracted enough attention as it is.” He glanced at Falconer. “Tell me again what the Englishman said we’d find—what was his name?”

  “Captain Clovis,” Falconer replied without taking his eye from the glass. “A ruined city has been turned into a roadside resting place, which the desert folk call a caravanserai. Four towers marking a city all but smothered by the desert. Two of the towers are crumbling; the others belong to a mosque at the city’s heart and not at the walls. The ruins spread out eastward, beyond the old fortifications, and are used as corrals. Bedouin tents rise beyond them.”

  Bivens added, “Clovis also said the fortress walls are of brick and not stone.”

  Harkness scowled at the danger beyond the horizon. “How the man saw the nature of those walls is beyond me. Did he make landfall?”

  “Not he.” Falconer shook his head. “Two of his men.”

  Bivens glanced at Amelia Henning, then added, “Captain Clovis stated that these corrals are used not just for animals.”

  “I know that.” Harkness stiffened as the heat waves momentarily cleared. “Yes. There. Four towers. Two in ruins. Lieutenant, you may order the bosun to make way.”

  They turned east and sailed toward Tunis. As they traversed the shoreline, they studied intently the knolls rising behind the caravanserai. Forming a backdrop to the road, the hills grew in height the further eastward the ship sailed. Midway between the caravanserai and Tunis, the cliffs reached a height of several hundred meters, paralleling the shoreline and about half a kilometer inland. Falconer watched a train of camels and donkeys and men parade in a slow desert cadence along the road running between the sea and the ocher cliffs. The hills were so close to the road as to frame the caravan in shades of yellow and auburn. Falconer was the first to sight a curious formation atop one hill, one that Captain Clovis had instructed them to identify. A pair of stone fingers rose half again as high as the hill itself, frozen in timeless salute to the sun and the heat.

  Harkness shut his glass once more. “All right, I’ve seen enough. Lieutenant, bring us about. North by northwest. Take us well over the horizon.”

  “Aye, sir. North by northwest it is.”

  Harkness focused intently on Falconer. “If we take on this plan alone, we’ll be hung out like my dear wife’s laundry, flapping in the wind and open to attack. All I can say is I hope your English skipper is a man to be trusted.”

  Falconer handed Reginald his telescope. “I hope so too, Captain.”

  They were in position twelve hours before the scheduled meeting. First they sailed almost within hailing distance of the Tunis port. Harkness ordered that a brace of cannons be fired. In response, the ancient Carthage walls boiled with men. Falconer watched the sun spark upon curved scimitar blades and muskets chased in silver. The fortress guns boomed their reply. While Harkness had fired with powder alone, the fort’s guns used round shot and elevated their guns to the maximum. Even so, the balls arced high into the air, then fell harmlessly into the sea.

  Harkness brooded by the quarterdeck railing. Falconer stood to one side, Amelia Henning and Reginald Langston to the other. Harkness said to the widow, “Tell me again what you know of the lay of the land.”

  “Beyond this port area are a series of low hills.”

  “Aye, I see that.”

  “Beyond the hills is a giant lake. Or perhaps it is a third bay—I have no idea. But I did not see a connection to the sea. And beyond that is Tunis proper.”

  The hillsides formed a distinctly desert scene. Low houses were surrounded by stone walls of the same color. The houses and the walls and the lanes all blended into the desert. Yet dotted among these were huge Bedouin tents, some larger than the more permanent dwellings.

  “And the citadel?”

  “You see it there.”

  “It looks half destroyed. Or half finished.”

  The fortress appeared so old it had melded with the northern cliffs. The southern side tumbled into a pile of rubble, the rubble disappeared into the slope of a dune, and the dune fell into the inner harbor. There were, as Amelia Henning had described to them earlier, no windows that Falconer could see. Spaced around the outer wall were tight arrow slits.

  Amelia Henning’s voice had grown as low as the wind moaning through the rigging. “It is as dark and old as unmarked graves.”

  Harkness lowered his telescope. “My dear Mrs. Henning, I am well aware this is extremely trying for you. But I must ask you to brace yourself. These questions are critical to the success of our venture.”

  She straightened her shoulders with genuine effort. “Ask what you will of me, please.”
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br />   “Thank you.” Harkness returned to his inspection as the cannons fired again. “What say you, Bivens?”

  “The gunners are either lazy or ill trained, sir.” Bivens handed the timepiece back to the skipper. “Four minutes between rounds. And the cannons do not track more than thirty degrees.”

  “What does that mean?” Reginald asked.

  “It means they are old guns, sir. Very old. It means that the man who occupies that keep is secure in his treaties and not his arms.”

  “But we are not intending to attack!” the woman wailed, then covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Even so, it pays to know our enemy, does it not?” Harkness cut off any reply by asking the lady, “You mentioned before that you entered the inner keep.”

  “Two chambers only.” They all could see she was making every effort to hold to calm.

  “From what I see, sir,” Bivens said, “the inner fortress could hardly hold much more.”

  Falconer agreed. The fortress might have once been a far grander affair, but he doubted it. He had visited such desert-style keeps during his checkered past. The ancient builders did not intend to make palaces. They sought a strong room, a secure hold for their booty, and little else. The true palaces would be further inland, where their masters could live surrounded by the desert’s security.

  “I spy one harbor only,” Harkness said.

  “It only seems that way.” The woman’s voice was quiet but now as determined as the set of her spine. “There is a narrow spit of land, scarcely broader than the road which runs along its crest.”

  “A road, you say.”

  “Yes.” Her features were as taut as the wind-filled sails overhead. And as pale. “It runs from one side of the harbor to the other. Ringing that are the slave corrals and the fortress. The slave keepers’ quarters are in the stubby tower you see there.”

  Harkness raised his voice, addressing both the young officer beside him and the crew on watch. “Lieutenant Bivens!”