Bedazzled

'Where are we going, sir?' Meggie ventured.

'Why, home, lassie, God be willing,' Knox said. 'I have to lock you in until we clears the harbor. Tend to your mistress now. There's water and fruit on the table. I'm sorry we have no wine, but, as you know, they don't hold with spirits here.' He closed the door behind him, and Meggie heard the key turn in the lock.

India had been placed upon the captain's bed, and now Meggie hurried to see if her mistress was returning to consciousness. Quickly she untied the lady's bound wrists. She gasped softly, and shook her head in disbelief at the purple bruise forming on India's jaw. 'Oh, the brute!' the servant said coldly. 'I hope my lady isn't angered at me for not crying out when I had the chance, but I couldn't live wi myself if I had hae the deaths of those three men on my conscience.' She shook her head, and, going to the table, poured some water. Raising India up, she gently tried to force a little water down her throat. India coughed, and her golden eyes flew open.

'Meggie!' Her hand went to her jaw. 'Ohh, that hurts.' Her glance swept the cabin. 'Where are we?' she asked her servant.

'Aboard ship, my lady. He hit you, and then carried you from the palace. Ohh, my lady! Had I cried for the guards they would have killed him, and he's your kin. I didn't know what to do!'

'It's all right, Meggie. I'll kill him myself,' India said. 'Have we left port yet?'

'They're getting under way now despite this storm,' was the frightened reply. 'That Knox has locked us in, I fear.'

'Damnation!' India swore, and attempted to arise, but she fell back with a groan. 'Allah! I'm so dizzy.' Then her hands went protectively to her flat belly, but everything else seemed all right.

'Give it a few minutes, my lady,' Meggie advised, 'and then we'll try sitting you up. There ain't nothing we can do now anyhow.'

'You must keep my secret, Meggie,' India said meaningfully.

The young servant understood, and asked, 'Why didn't you tell him, my lady? Then he would have left you in peace.'

'I was going to if he continued to persist, but he turned away as if he would go. Then he suddenly pivoted about, and hit me. I did not have the chance,' India said. 'Now, what am I going to do? We are locked in, and Tom is too busy getting his ship under way. No. I must keep my secret for now. I will think of some way to escape him. I have escaped my family before.'

'That Mr. Knox says we are going home to England, my lady,' Meggie informed her mistress. 'It will be weeks before we see land again. You have no place to escape to, I fear.'

'I have learned patience in El Sinut,' India said wisely. 'When we arrive in London, we shall give my cousin the slip. My parents have shut up the London house, but I can get into Greenwood, and there is no staff there now but the gatekeeper and his wife. We can easily avoid them. I will get a message to my husband telling him where we are. It will all take time, and my child will probably be born before Caynan Reis can come for me, but he will come. I know it! In the meantime, however, I intend to give my cousin Thomas Southwood as difficult a time as possible,' India concluded with a wicked chuckle. 'The heroic fool treated me as if I was still a child, instead of a woman grown. He will pay for that piece of foolishness.'

The ship moved slowly from its dock, edging its way in the choppy waters toward the channel that led between the two lighthouses guarding the harbor. The rain continued to beat down, the thunder booming, the jagged streaks of lightning flashing across the skies. When they had reached the vicinity of the two lighthouses, the sea anchor was thrown out. The longboats were launched, carrying four men each. The boats were rowed quickly to the lighthouses, beached, and then its occupants entered the lighthouses to take the two keeps prisoner, binding, gagging, and blindfolding them exactly as they had the sailors in their vessel's hole. A lantern signal indicated that both keepers were now incapacitated. While the longboats carrying two sailors each made their way back to the ship, the remaining two sailors at each lighthouse began to turn the winch to lower the chain guarding the harbor.

The longboats returned twice to each lighthouse carrying the captive seamen who were marched into the lighthouses only to have their legs rebound and their blindfolds refastened. Each of them was resettled at a distance from the others to prevent any possible contact that might lead to their premature escape. As they knew where they were, they were no longer frightened. The lighthouse doors were locked, and barred from the outside, the Royal Charles raised her sea anchor, sailed from the harbor, and once again moored itself, while the occupants of the two longboats moved their crafts to the sea side of the lighthouse islands, raised the harbor chain up to protect the entry, and rowed back to their ship in very choppy seas.

About them the storm continued to rage, the thunder and the lightning even more pronounced now as they hauled anchor a final time, and began to make their way out into the open sea. Leaving command of his regained vessel in Mr. Bolton's hands, Captain Thomas Southwood unlocked the door of his quarters and stepped inside, neatly dodging the pitcher of water his cousin Lady India Lindley hurled at him.

'Idiot! Allah help you when my husband learns what you have done! Aruj Agha will scour the seas for me at my lord's command! And when you are recaptured, Tom Southwood, and they lop your arrogant head from its shoulders, I shall feel not the slightest twinge of guilt!'

'Is this the thanks I get for rescuing you?' he demanded. 'You are yet a spoiled child, India.'

'I am nineteen, Tom,' India told him, suddenly serious. 'When my mother was nineteen, she had already had two husbands, two children, and was enceinte with a third. My grandmother had birthed my mother, and was about to have my uncle James at nineteen. There isn't a woman in this family who wasn't grown by nineteen. Why do you persist in treating me like a child, Thomas Southwood? I am a married woman, and quite content to be so. Why did you not listen to me when I said I didn't want to come with you? Why did you assume I was some mindless infant who needed your protection? Did I ask for it? Did you ask me if I wanted to be rescued? No! You invaded my home, brutalized me, and then carried me off. You are a well-meaning idiot, sir.'

'I cannot take you back,' he said wearily.

'I know that,' she told him. 'Do you think I would endanger these men who have planned and struggled to make good their escape? If Aruj Agha catches up with you, there will be no mercy. An example will have to be made. That is their way.'

'Do you really love him, India?' he asked her, curious.

'Aye. Have I not said it over and over to you? I am the wife of the dey of El Sinut, and proud to be his wife.'

'It wasn't a real marriage,' he said, attempting to excuse himself. 'It wasn't a Christian marriage, India, and you are a Christian.'

'Aye, I am a Christian, but if you knew anything, really knew, about Islam, you would understand my marriage is quite valid. Besides, he was seeking a Protestant minister in El Sinut to marry us in my faith, although such a thing would have been done in secret. You were to be our witness, Thomas Southwood.'

'He loves you that much?' Thomas Southwood was very surprised that Caynan Reis would endanger himself and his position in such a manner. 'I think he only told you such a thing to ease your conscience, India. The sultan's dey in El Sinut would never risk a Christian marriage. It could mean his very life.'

'He would have done it, and allowed nothing to happen to us. Did you know there is a plot by the janissaries against the young sultan? Their agent came to Caynan Reis, and sought his allegiance. He said he would only give it to them if the deys of Algiers and Tunis agreed. He sent this man on his way, and then sent word to Istanbul to the valideh of the plot. He intended asking the valideh for autonomy for El Sinut as a reward when she offered one, so that our sons would have their own lands,' India told her startled