Sara Sheridan - Secret of the Sands

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She was a slave. He was her master. Both of them long to be free…1833 – The British Navy are conducting a survey of the Arabian Peninsula where slavery is as rife as ever despite being abolition. Zena, a headstrong and determined young Abyssinian beauty has been torn from her remote village, subjected to a tortuous journey and is now being offered for sale in the market of Muscat.Lieutenant James Wellstead is determined that his time aboard HMS Palinurus will be the conduit to fame and fortune. However, all his plans are thrown into disarray when two of his fellow officers go missing while gathering intelligence in the desert.By an unexpected twist of fate – Zena finds herself the property of Wellstead, now on a daring rescue mission into forbidding territory. Master and slave are drawn ever closer, but as danger faces them at every turn, they must endure heartache and uncertainty – neither of them knowing what fortune awaits them as they make their hazardous way through the shifting sands.A rich and epic novel that will appeal to fans of The Pirate's Daughter and East of the Sun.

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Most evenings there is thin soup of some kind or other – the watered-down, half-rancid remnants of meals served days ago at the emir’s table. The moisture in this mush is as important as the nourishment though Jessop has noticed he is sweating less and as a consequence he cannot cool down. He knows he is in the advanced stages of acute dehydration and thinks it would be good to write to his professor at King’s about the phenomenon. The old man would be interested, no doubt, for the human body is always endlessly fascinating to him and he values practical experimentation above all else. Both of the men have lost the ability to grow their beard and the thin, straggly wisps on their chins are matted against the skin. If you think about it too much, it becomes devilishly itchy.

Jessop is jolted out of this reverie by the voice of his companion.

‘I don’t see it,’ Jones says his first coherent words in several weeks that have not been formed to beg for food or water. ‘I’ve no idea how we are ever going to get out of here, old man.’

Jessop laughs more in shock than in amusement. He had assumed that Jones, like him, was wishing for death but that clearly has not been the case.

‘Really,’ Jones continues, as if it is only just occurring to him, ‘at most we could run if we could get through these ropes. But then how would we survive? There’s sand everywhere. Sand and baking sun. This whole damn country is just an oven.’

‘We’re not going to survive,’ the doctor says wearily. ‘At least, I hope not for much longer. A little more privation and we’ll be there, my friend, and that is my considered, medical opinion.’

Apparently, this has not occurred to the lieutenant. Perhaps, Jessop wonders, he thinks this is a tale in some story book and we have to get out because, as white men, we are the heroes. It occurs to him that Jones did not have much of a grasp on reality even before their fortunes changed, and now he does not comprehend that he is filthy, ragged and hovering on the cusp of death.

‘But they will send someone when they realise we’re missing, won’t they? I mean, we’re British subjects.’

The lieutenant manages to sound almost outraged. It’s actually quite admirable and Jessop can’t bring himself to point out that Haines is well-meaning but not always effective and that it will take an extraordinarily effective man to cross the burning sands and come to find them. All this to be done quickly – for in current circumstances, the doctor does not give himself or his companion much more than a few weeks of life. A man given no food can last three months, of course, there’s always that – and they are at least receiving some rations. But still, he considers, with the heat, another two months seems an impossibility unless things improve.

In any case, it is not, as far as the doctor can see, in Captain Haines’ nature to marshal his men into a search party or to undertake what would surely be an arduous negotiation with the Bedu . If the emir were for turning he would surely have done so by now. Their best hope is that he has sued for ransom, though there has been no mention of that, and truly the fellow would have a cheek, given they’d paid for his hospitality already. Jessop feels outraged. He didn’t kill the damn girl on purpose. In fact, he cured all the others. There is no accounting for it; the emir is grieving, he is not reasonable. He may never return to reason and that’s the truth. It is too exhausting to think about.

‘How long do you suppose we have been here?’ Jones cuts in on the doctor’s rambling thoughts. ‘How long do you think it will take them to rally the troops and come for us? It’s really not on. Seems to me that we’ve been tied up for far too long, anyway.’

It’s a good question. Jessop tries to work out how long it might have been but the trouble is that one scorching day merges into another. It’s impossible to measure time.

It’s weeks, he thinks, not months . He’s sure of it though he is aware that in these conditions he is easily confused. For all he knows they could have been here a year, perhaps, or longer. The imprisonment in the tent is punctuated very occasionally by a sandstorm or a few days of exhausting marching to another oasis where the tent is set up again and the two men are bound again to a stake. Once, they were lucky and the ropes were long enough to allow them to sleep on their stomachs. Sleeping on the stomach, Jessop has come to understand, diminishes the pain of extreme hunger. Today his bonds are far too tight, however, to manage it. They’ve been bound like this, he thinks, for ages and ages, though how long that actually is escapes him.

‘They’ve certainly held us for several weeks,’ is the best he can do.

‘Well, I hope the rescue party make it soon,’ the lieutenant says testily, as if his carriage is late for the opera or the vicar and his sister have, inexplicably, not turned up to take tea. ‘Really I do.’

Chapter Sixteen

After some weeks, Zena learns that she is all but invisible to everyone in her master’s household. The servants come and go, each with a prescribed list of duties that they undertake like clockwork. She need not clean nor cook nor even wash herself – everything simply seems to happen without any effort on her part. A tray of food arrives twice a day. Jugs of scented water are delivered so she can be washed. There are clean clothes and a doe-eyed, tongue-tied negro girl combs and dresses Zena’s hair. She is a sidi slave who speaks neither Arabic nor her own Abyssinian tongue nor, indeed, any language at all it seems for, she never says a word to anyone, and will not indulge even in sign language, for Zena has tried. It seems to her that the slaves clean the furniture, make the bed, refill the lamps, sweep the floor, leave fresh water and jellies for the master’s delight and care for her in the same way that they look after everything else – there is for them, no distinction between their master’s inanimate objects and the girl who is confined to his room day after day. It is all very businesslike.

This must be what it feels like to be a pet, Zena thinks, and then she realises that in her experience, even a pet is shown some affection.

Meanwhile, each morning the master rises shortly after sunrise, prays and leaves. In the evenings he returns to the room with one of three or four slave boys, who are his favourites, and occasionally two of them at the same time. Zena spends almost all day at her seat by the window where she finds she can pass the hours simply watching the activities on the street. There are white jubbahed hawkers and earnest, serious-faced slaves going about their business, intriguing, covered litters carried by muscle-bound black bearers and keen-eyed messengers, stick thin from running errands and always keen to be on their way. Down the hill she catches glimpses of the azure sea, all the way across the bay and out to the Strait of Hormuz. At night, the stars are fascinating, though none of the shapes they make in the sky are familiar or at least appear in the location she expects them, as seen from the fragrant, lush vantage point of her grandmother’s compound where she used to sit and listen to the crickets in the darkness and trace shapes between the specks of bright fire above. In Muscat, Zena loves the sunsets and after the blazing sky settles into darkness she enjoys watching the bustle of so many far-off people moving indoors, eating with their family and feasting with friends as the city closes its shutters and lights its lamps.

When the master arrives back at his room it is always very late. Zena lights the naft in anticipation though when he swings briskly through the door he only dismisses her casually as soon as his slave boy arrives – just as he did the first night she met him. Lying in the hallway on the cool earthen tiles that line the floor, she hears a lewd cry or two from behind the thick, cedarwood door and falls asleep after midnight, staring at the low moon and waking only as the muezzin’s calls start when the first red line of dawn appears on the horizon. Prayer is better than sleep, they echo around the bay from minarets all over the city, summoning the men to the fajir and lending a rhythm to Zena’s day even if she does not pray when they call. As the music fades, the door to the room opens and the master’s boys step over her on their way back to their own quarters. Then she waits patiently, hovering outside for perhaps half an hour or more, listening to the household wake up – the sound of far-off doors opening and closing, a child’s voice and a woman’s laugh – before the master himself leaves and she can take her place, like some kind of ornamental doll, a place holder, on the cushions by the window.

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