Page 7 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)

Where our departure was secret and solitary, the Norsemen’s beast-ship lying dark on the sea, hidden from any who might hinder their ungodly work, our arrival is its very opposite.

The ship comes closer and closer to the shore, the great red sail now taken down, our progress made by the oarsmen aboard.

The long neck and head of our beast glides past small fishing boats.

The men aboard them are darker skinned than we are, burnt browner still by the sun.

They wear long robes in bright colours, some have their heads wrapped with cloths, a few even have their faces fully veiled with only their eyes visible.

They watch our boat with interest but not with fear.

I believe they know the Norsemen and their business here.

These are the docks of a large city, beyond the quayside lie mud-coloured ramparts and rooftops, with high towers dotted here and there amongst them.

Released from our crouched shelter, the sun beats down on us so hard that it makes my head swim.

“Where are we?” whispers Catalina beside me.

I shake my head. The Maghreb, I believe, but I do not know what port.

There is the smell of rotting fish, of dung, of sweat.

I feel my stomach roll and hope I will not disgrace myself by vomiting again.

The Norsemen busy themselves with securing the ship alongside the dock, the oars now put away.

The yellow-haired man comes towards us and with a quick movement unties us from the metal fastenings.

I stand, unsteady, but already I am being pushed towards the edge of the ship with Catalina.

One of the Norsemen has jumped ashore and now he places a rough plank between the ship and the dockside, which we both stagger across, followed by the yellow-haired man.

Having my feet on the ground again makes tears start to my eyes, despite the circumstances.

The Norseman pushes at me to walk forwards and I do so, Catalina clinging to my arm.

There are men everywhere and there are few who do not leer at Catalina and I as we pass, our heads uncovered and dressed only in our by now filthy linen shifts.

“What is that?” whispers Catalina, cringing back against me.

A strange beast lumbers past us, its body like a horse but one spawned by the devil, warped in its nature. It is hairy, with a misshapen hump on its back and legs that look as though they were put on backwards, ending in soft cloven feet tipped with wide blunt claws.

“A camel,” I say, having seen a picture of one once, an illustration in a book.

I had thought it fanciful then but now I see that the artist was correct.

They are everywhere across the docks, being laden with goods or unburdened.

I see one or two horses also, a few mules and donkeys, but it is clear that the chief beast in use here is the camel.

They make strange groaning noises when they are told to rise or sit, and both Catalina and I give them as wide a berth as we can when we pass by a group of them.

All around us, men shout and labour. But as we disembark a strange sound fills the air, a wailing, an unearthly cry emanating from the rooftops and on a sudden most of the men stop their work and kneel in the dust, all facing in the same direction.

They hold their hands before their faces and bow their heads towards the dirt, again and again.

“What are they doing?” asks Catalina, wide-eyed at the spectacle.

“Praying,” I say tightly. “It is not true prayer of course,” I add, mindful that I am still all Catalina has in the way of spiritual guidance.

“How can it be? Out here in the open, without even being in a sacred space nor with a holy man to direct the prayers. It is what passes for prayer amongst these people. They are Muslims, heathens.”

She nods, cowed. The prayer seems to have finished, for the men rise and go about their business.

The Norseman pushes us forwards, towards a low building at the back of the dockyard.

We stagger towards it, our feet made unsteady by the heat, by fear, by the hard ground that does not rock beneath us.

There is an ill-painted door on which the Norseman hammers with his fist. It opens quickly, a short ugly man nodding when he sees us, as though we are expected.

He waves us in, and we follow him into darkness and then into a dusty courtyard.

A fat well-dressed man is sat under an awning and he gestures to our captor when he sees him, greets him as though they are old friends.

The Norseman speaks with him for a few moments, then gestures towards us.

The fat man shows little interest, only nods to his servant, the short man, who pushes me towards a door at one end of the courtyard.

For a moment, ridiculously, I want to run to the Norseman from whom we are being taken.

He is the only person who knows where we came from, who could, if he wished, takes us back to that same place, to the apple orchard where he and his men killed Alberte and took us women.

If he leaves us, if we never see him again, how would anyone here ever take us home again?

But the short man pushes me again and I know that there is nothing I can do to avoid the fate that has already been laid upon me, the fate I first glimpsed when I saw Alberte stumbling towards me, already half-dead.

Whether I ever see the Norseman again or not, makes no difference.

I walk towards the door and the man opens it and pushes me through the doorway.

The room is mostly empty, apart from some old rags and a little straw.

In a corner is a large vessel, perhaps for water.

In another corner is a covered pail and from the smell in the room I can only imagine that it has already been used for bodily functions.

The floor is made of bare tiles, dirty and chipped.

There are thick iron links set into the walls, such as might be used to tie up a horse, were they outside.

In here, they are no doubt used to tie up people.

The door bangs shut behind us. I hear a lock turn and Catalina and I are alone for the first time since we first met.

She begins to weep at once, clinging to me as a child might to its mother.

I pat her stiffly. She will need to be stronger than this, will need to put her faith in God rather than in a fallible human such as myself.

“What will we do? Oh, what will we do?” she begs me.

“I do not know,” I say, trying to sound as though there is no reason to wail.

“First, we must drink.” I make my way over to the vessel and am glad to see that I was right, it is half-filled with water.

Just behind it lies a wooden cup, badly split but which I use to scoop up some of the water.

I taste it cautiously and although it is not fresh or cold, at least it does not taste foul.

I make Catalina drink three full cups and although her shrunken stomach makes her gag briefly at the sudden filling, still, she does not vomit, and I drink deeply myself.

There is a window, which lets in light, but it has bars across it, and I do not trouble myself with checking whether they are solid.

It is clear to me that we are in a room in which many unfortunates such as ourselves have been before.

This is a room made for captives. For slaves.

Catalina has slumped to the floor. She looks up at me, her face white, her eyes rimmed with red, tears still falling. “If we could only speak their language,” she whimpers. “My father is not very rich, but he would pay a goodly sum if he knew we were here. Would the convent pay for our release?”

I shake my head. “Your father will believe you to be safely at the convent by now,” I say.

“And the convent…” I stop. I wonder what they will think of me, if they will think that harm has befallen our little group, or whether they will think that we were tempted by the world, that we ran away.

I hope that the Mother Superior will not think such a thing of us, that she will realise that something must have occurred.

But even if she does… “No-one will know what has become of us,” I say simply.

“We have travelled too far, and the Norsemen made sure not to be seen. There is no way home.”

Catalina bursts into noisy sobs and I hear her cry out for her mother. I gaze out of the window, but I can see nothing but a sky so blue it makes my eyes sting.

Later that day a squat serving woman opens the door and indicates we should follow her.

We are taken outside to a walled yard with pecking chickens scratching in the dirt and a tethered goat that bleats incessantly.

There is a small, tiled area on which the serving woman gestures that I should stand, then she tugs at my shift and makes a movement to show I should remove it.

I shake my head. She pulls from her pocket a sharp knife and holds it up.

I am unsure whether she means to threaten me or indicate that she will cut the shift, but I comply, lifting the shift over my head.

She takes it from me and turns away. I have not been naked before another person since I was a child and my mother washed me.

In the convent we bathed rarely, instead washing ourselves with a cloth and a basin of water.

If we bathed it was done quickly and we kept our shifts on, so that we should not think on our mortal flesh.

I have barely seen my own naked body as a grown woman.

I stand naked in the hot sun, wondering on what saint I could possibly call that would not turn away in horror at what has become of me, a woman whose life should be devoted to holy service, an anointed bride of Christ, standing shamelessly naked in the open air.