Page 5 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)
We are no longer on the road. Instead, the horses pick their way through fields, keeping to the rough, overgrown borders or through wooded areas so that my face is scratched by shrubs and low-hanging branches.
I keep my eyes shut, for there is not much to see and I am afraid of brambles.
But my mind is racing. One word keeps coming back to me.
Rus . As a child, my father told me of the Norsemen, whom the Arabs called Rus.
They sailed great ships and raided our coastlines, kidnapping men and women, taking them as slaves for themselves or selling them to the Maghreb, across the sea south of Al-Andalus, in the lands of the Muslims. The worst of their attacks took place long before our time, but as Catalina told us, there are still the odd raids, brutal and quick, taking unwary women and children for slaves.
I think of the moment of temptation to which I succumbed: the shade, the ripe fruit, the fresh scent of apples in the warm air and curse myself.
Poor half-witted Alberte is already dead for my sin and the fate of Sister Maria and Catalina is my burden to carry now, for I cannot think how we might escape.
Eyes still closed, I pray for help to Our Lady, though the pain in my shoulders and the ache in my head tells me that my prayers may go unanswered, that my temptation to stray from the path I had been commanded to follow is about to be punished more severely than I could have imagined.
The horses stop in a heavily wooded area, but I can hear the sea again, the rush of waves on the shore not far away and guess that we are somewhere back close to A Lanzada.
I think of the watchtower by the hermitage and hope that someone is watching, that they will spot something amiss and come to our aid.
It is full daylight, surely a Norse ship would be spotted at once?
But the men have other ideas. They yank us down from the horses, I hear the muffled yelps from Sister Maria and Catalina as they fall to the ground, their bound hands meaning they are unable to break their falls.
When my turn comes, I try to brace myself, but it makes no difference, I am half-pulled, half-thrown into the shrubby undergrowth and left to lie there.
I dare not move, expecting the men to force themselves on us, but instead I hear them move a few steps away, speaking to one another in a guttural tongue, their voices unafraid, one even laughs.
I cannot see them, but I hear them sit down and then faintly smell food that they are eating, bread and apples, no doubt picked from the same orchard where they took us.
I can hear them crunching, smell again the faint sweet fresh smell.
I look carefully about me without moving.
I can see Sister Maria’s feet and some of Catalina’s long hair. I can hear Catalina crying softly.
Time goes by. Occasionally I move a little, only to stop my limbs from going numb.
I dare not draw attention by moving a great deal.
The men continue to talk between themselves as though they were merely passing the time together in idleness.
I hear one snore when he snoozes for a while.
They are unhurried, unconcerned at being found out.
They must know this place well, know that they are fully concealed.
They are waiting for something, but I am not sure what.
I see Sister Maria wriggle violently once and one of the men throws an apple core at her with a command, no doubt to be still and silent, then laughs.
They have been waiting for darkness.
The sun sinks. I cannot see it, but I feel the cool breeze of the evening, see the shadows fade and change to dusk.
We have been here for many hours. My mouth is dry with the desire for water, for I have not drunk since late morning.
At last, one of the men squats near each of us and lets us drink from a waterbag.
It is not enough to fully sate my thirst but the few gulps I am allowed are desperately welcome.
They wait a little longer, as dusk turns to night.
I think of the watching tower and wonder if it has a light in it, how far out to sea that light might shine.
I pray to Our Lady of the Lanzada, the hermitage in which we knelt only this morning, where we asked for a safe journey home. I pray for a miracle.
I am thrown back over my horse, my stomach pressed hard against the saddle, I hear the other two women served in the same manner before the Norsemen begin to lead us further through the woods and then out into an open space, I think we must be on a clifftop overlooking the sea, for I hear the waves closer than ever and beyond the ground I can only make out an empty nothingness of darkness.
The stars shine brightly, but the moon is only a tiny crescent, I cannot make out any details by its pale glow.
I twist my head this way and that, trying to make out anything, anything at all, the tiny lights of the village or even of a single house.
One of the men cuffs my bare scalp and hisses something at me, no doubt an order to be still.
I kick out at him and he cuffs me harder.
I hang loose again, my face half against the hard leather saddle, half on the horse’s warm flank.
This time, when we are pulled down, we land in soft sand, then are yanked to our feet and made to trudge through it, my feet slipping and sliding as the sand yields to my steps.
I and my captor are leading the others closer to the sea.
Twice I nearly fall, but the man behind me jerks me back to my feet, pulling my arm so hard it hurts.
When cold water washes over my feet I step back, but the Norseman has other ideas.
He forces me forwards. I struggle, for a moment unreasonably fearing that he intends to drown me, which would be easy enough.
If I were to fall now, knee-deep in water, my hands bound, I would drown in moments.
I am pushed forwards again into the shallows of the sea, feel the wetness cover my feet, my ankles, my calves and the cold embrace of my shift as it becomes soaked, clinging to my thighs and waist. Now I see a moving shape close to us and realise there is a small rowing boat bobbing up and down.
I am all but thrown into it, then pushed to take a seat on a rough wooden plank that serves as a bench.
In the darkness, I make out the other men, Sister Maria and Catalina joining us.
The boat rocks wildly and I want to clutch at the side but cannot.
I wonder what is to become of the horses and wonder if perhaps these men have an accomplice here by the shore, a traitorous Galician who is well paid for his silence, trading the lives of good Christians for valuable horseflesh.
Two of the men take up oars and now there is the fast sound of wood against water and the boat begins to move across the waves.
Far off along the shore, at last, I glimpse a cluster of tiny lights which may well be A Lanzada, but they are too far away to hear our screams, even were we able to scream.
I twist my head in the darkness and see a faint light in the endless dark waters. The men are rowing towards it. I feel a cold shudder pass through me, certain that a larger boat, a ship, is waiting for us, out there on the waves, showing only enough light to guide us towards it.
We draw closer and closer to the dim light. One of the men in our boat lets out a sudden call and at once, more lights appear ahead of us, illuminating what has been waiting all this time.
The ship fills my heart with fear. Its carved prow is surmounted with the head of a beast and it rocks slowly back and forth on the water as though it is alive.
The lights now shining from it should reassure me, but they do not, they only tell me that these men, out here in the deep waters of the sea, are no longer afraid of being caught, that it is too late for the miraculous rescue I prayed for.
Each of us is tightly held by the men in the little boat and passed up to the many disembodied hands reaching over the sides of the ship.
Lifted over the waters beneath us, we are then thrown onto the deck.
I fall poorly, hitting one elbow so that pain shoots up my arm.
I yelp in pain. A hand pulls me to my feet; a lantern is lifted.
I come face to face with a man, his face a hand’s breadth from mine.
His eyes are pale blue, like an early morning sky, a colour I have never seen before.
His hair is dark yellow, long and coarse, pulled back from his head into a rough plait as though he were a peasant woman, though this is no woman.
He towers over me, his shoulders massive and bare under a sleeveless leather jerkin, his muscled arms and even his neck marked with dark blue designs, shapes and whorls I do not know the meaning of.
He pulls the gag from my mouth and then says something loudly into my face, but I do not know what he is saying.
I turn my face to one side, and he slaps at me to look back at him.
He repeats the words, but I only stare at him.
He shrugs and drags me towards Sister Maria and Catalina, who are already sitting, their hands tied behind their backs, their tear-streaked faces turned towards me, eyes fixed on me as I stumble my way behind the man.
Their captors have left them, gone to join the rest of the crew.
Suddenly I am fighting, hitting and biting, kicking and screaming, not words but only screeching fear. My composure has gone from me. My thoughts of caring for Sister Maria and Catalina are gone, at this moment I care only for myself and my safety, my ability to escape the man holding me prisoner.
But every bit of my strength and desperation is nothing to this man. He half-laughs, then pushes me so that I stagger backwards landing hard on my behind, almost in the laps of Sister Maria and Catalina, their bodies softening the blow.
“Sister Juliana,” whispers Sister Maria, but I do not know what she was planning to say, for the man reaches over and gives her a hard slap to the face, so that she cries out and then hangs her head low, tears dripping from her face in silence.
Catalina flinches and her shoulders shake with the effort of keeping her own sobs silent.
I sit in silence, though no tears fall from my eyes.
My mind goes over and over the moment when Sister Maria asked me if we might rest a while.
I think of my hesitation, my agreement. I wonder, if I had said no and kept riding, would we be safe within the walls of the convent that would have hosted us tonight?
Or would the Norsemen have taken us anyway?
Were they on the road behind us, or hiding in the orchard?
Had they already marked us as their victims, was our fate already written, or was there a moment when the wheel of destiny turned?
Was it the moment when I reached out my hand for the sharp-sweet scarlet flesh and gave myself over to the pleasures of the world?
Above us, the beast-ship’s head towers over us. I see its open mouth, the carved teeth within, a scarlet-painted tongue rippling out.
“Do not fight them,” I whisper quickly. “They will only hurt you.”
All around the ship orders are given and shouts come in response.
I consider screaming for help but know already that it is too late for that now, we are far from the shore and I saw no other ships or even little boats.
There is a heavy falling sound above our heads and craning upwards I catch sight of the bottom of a vast dark sail unfurling above us.