Page 94 of Inconvenient Honor
Days slip quickly when you want them to last. Seven more passed with little progress, and Lily’s time moved inexorably closer. No rescue appeared on the horizon. No word came from Gibraltar. No prayers saw answer.
Lily tried to walk serenely through each day. Every morning she sat with the women, grinding grain and exchanging languages as if they were family friends and not strangers who would sell her and her baby into bondage as easily as they would converse with her. Every night she clung to Richard and accepted the comfort he tried to pour into her with his gentle touch.
Every day she smiled. Every day she felt shadows shroud her soul. Every day her hand slipped more often to protect her growing belly. Every afternoon she climbed the cliffs to hope for rescue.
Weeks into their imprisonment Richard climbed with her as he often did. The steps had become more difficult, and he put an arm to her waist to help her.
“You shouldn’t do this,” he said.
“Exercise is good for me,” she replied, breathing heavily.
“That may have been true last week. No longer.”
“Will you forbid it?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t dare,” he said wryly. “I only advise.”
Lily tried to ignore the worry lines she watched grow deeper on his face daily. She put one foot in front of the other. A few steps later she wondered if he might be right. The climb grew more difficult.
At the top, he sat her on a mossy rock to catch herbreath. Hamidou’s lookout gave an embarrassed nod and looked away as the boys always did. This one looked particularly young; Lily guessed him to be nine or ten.
Richard stepped up onto the rock above her. Lily craned her neck to look and saw that he scanned the wide Mediterranean, looking northward as he always did toward Gibraltar. She relaxed back down and turned her own eyes toward the coast.
Blue fog clung to the coast late this day. Lily watched while it began to thin and scatter. While she watched, a flicker of movement caught her attention. At first she thought she imagined it; she didn’t. She rose to her feet in excitement.
“Richard! There—what’s happening?” she called, pointing toward the moving object.
The lookout leapt to his feet and followed her pointed finger. He ran to the edge and shouted down to men in the village and then pelted down the hill.
“It certainly excited our little friend.” Richard had climbed down and stood next to her. “It’s a ship, but what kind?”
“It looks like four masts.”
“Whose do you think it is?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Too far to tell.” Hamidou’s frigate had returned several days before and sat at anchor in the cove.
“It is coming from the south. Could it be English?”
“Possible, but I wouldn’t count on it. It is sailing directly at us, though.”
They stood and watched the ship draw nearer.
“Dutch,” Richard said, “From the looks. I don’t see the flag.”
The ship neared the island and moved away from the shoals on the East, turning toward the cove on the north side.
“Not the Union flag, not one of ours,” Lily sighed. “What do you think is happening?”
“At a guess, it looks like the pennant of the Bey of Tunis.”
Tunis. The slave market. Lily gripped Richard’s hand fiercely. “It has only been twenty-seven days!” Hamidoucannot be trusted.
Richard put an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side. He leaned to kiss the top of her head. “Don’t leap to assumptions, Lily. It may be a friendly visit.”
When they made their slow and plodding way down the path, hindered by Lily’s girth and Richard’s determination to protect, they found the village alive with excitement. Friendly visit indeed.
She could see the visitors, obviously Berbers, appear over the rise and march toward the square. Richard steered her in that direction when she would have fled to their hut.
