Chapter 19
A TWENTY-TON BLOCK of stone had been blasted out of the quarry earlier with gunpowder.
A hundred men were in the act of maneuvering the rock slab onto a huge man-drawn sledge.
When the quarry foreman gave the command, every slave threw his entire weight against the block of stone, attempting to lift it up.
The men groaned. Some wept. Xavier strained against the rough stone, tears streaming down his face, blinding him. Whips cracked.
“Up,” the foreman shouted. “Up, heave it up.”
Xavier grunted, throwing the entire weight of his body into the task of lifting up the huge slab of rock.
The whips hissed again. Someone cried out in pain.
Men grunted and groaned. The block moved fractionally upward.
Immediately Turks were rushing forward and rolling smaller wooden blocks underneath it so that the stone rested a few feet off of the ground.
“Halt!” the foreman shouted. “Delwatee!”
The slaves collapsed onto the ground. Xavier sat with his back against one of the smaller blocks, gasping for breath, every muscle in his body quivering with fatigue and tension.
Beside him, Timmy panted harshly. Xavier glanced past Timmy at Tubbs, who sat with his eyes closed and his head back, gasping for air like a fish out of water.
The sun was broiling hot, beating down on their hatless heads and too bare bodies.
Xavier felt as if every inch of skin on his body were badly burned, and his back, crisscrossed with welts and abrasions, continued to torment him.
Xavier turned to look at the Spaniard whom he had carried all the way from Tripoli.
The man was useless. He’d had no strength to exert to aid his fellow captives in moving the twenty-ton stone; his presence had been just that, a presence, nothing more.
Yet Kadar and the quarry foreman, Valdez, had shown no human mercy or compassion, and they had insisted he labor alongside the others.
Now the Spaniard sat almost bonelessly in a heap upon the ground, eyes wide, staring vacantly toward the line of black hills on the horizon just south of the quarry.
Xavier closed his eyes briefly, his pulse beginning to subside. God, he was tired, and his body hurt so badly—and it was only midmorning. How could anyone survive such grueling labor?
Xavier turned to the Spaniard. The man remained motionless, and Xavier felt a frisson of fear. “Are you all right, amigo mio?” Xavier asked. He had yet to learn the name of the man whose life he had saved.
The Spaniard did not move, nor did he reply—as if he hadn’t even heard Xavier.
Xavier became concerned. He hesitated, then reached out to touch the man’s thin shoulder. “My friend?”
The Spaniard slumped forward, face-first, into the gravel and dirt.
Xavier leapt to his feet, surprised that he even had the strength to do so. He knelt beside the Spaniard, automatically touching him. His skin was warm and wet. But his body was oddly still.
Xavier turned him over onto his back.
Tubbs came forward and knelt beside him. “Captain, sir?”
Xavier stared down at the Spaniard, who lay still, his eyes open and sightless. “He’s dead,” he said, feeling bile rising up in him.
“He was doomed from the start,” Tubbs said quietly.
“Doomed? Yes, he was doomed—from the moment he became a captive in Barbary.” Xavier tried to tamp down the anger rising up so rapidly inside him.
He stood up. The Turkish soldiers guarding the slaves tensed, and one man raised a whip threateningly.
Xavier stared coldly. “Tell Valdez that we have a dead man here.”
The Turk gazed at Xavier for a long moment, to prove that he was not taking orders from a slave, and then he turned and spat.
If he noticed or even cared that the Spaniard was dead, he gave no sign.
He spoke briefly to another solider, who turned and walked away.
Xavier looked past the guards. Kadar had returned to Tripoli hours ago, but the foreman, Valdez, sat in the shade of a tent, smoking a pipe while a young male slave fanned him with large palm fronds.
Valdez stood and came forward slowly. He was short and wiry, a Spaniard turned Turk.
Once he had been a captive himself. Xavier’s fury increased.
The Spanish slave should not have ever left the bagnio that morning—the Turks were inhuman, animals.
And this Valdez, having once been a slave himself, was far worse.
Xavier felt like an animal himself. He wanted to attack Valdez, tear him apart.
Valdez approached. He paused in front of Xavier, staring him in the eye, then glanced indifferently down at the dead Spaniard. He nudged him with the toe of his sandal.
Xavier trembled, fists clenched. He had an example to set. The Pearl to destroy. An escape to execute. He must control himself.
Valdez looked at Xavier and laughed. Then he turned and issued a command. Within seconds two Turks were dragging the dead slave away. Xavier watched, aware that they would take the Spaniard to an open grave where hundreds of other slaves were buried.
It was obscene. No decent burial, no last rites, being worked to death.
“Get back with the others,” Valdez said in stilted English. His dark eyes gleamed. He was waiting, Xavier knew, for Xavier to refuse him.
Xavier turned and walked back to the others.
Alex and Murad arrived at the quarries at noon.
Not only were they clad as bedouins, but they were leading two shaggy donkeys laden with packs that Murad had hastily purchased.
They paused on the road just before the pit where the men were working.
From where she stood, she was looking down on about a hundred slaves who were attempting to elevate a monstrously large block of stone onto a sledge.
She had never been to the quarries before, and her heart seemed to stop at the incredible sight she gazed upon.
“Oh, God,” was all she could manage.
The slaves were pathetic, emaciated men of all nationalities clad in nothing but rags while working bareheaded under the broiling desert sun.
Alex’s stomach lurched. The block of stone had lengths of rope coiled around it.
Dozens of men pulled on the four ends, while dozens of others literally pushed their bodies up against the stone in what seemed like a hopeless effort to budge it.
Worse, the guards were fully armed, and also held whips, which were hissing continually, driving the men on as if they were animals.
Some of the men cried out as the lash bit into their legs or arms or backs.
Alex could not stand it.
Tears streamed down her face.
“I am taking you home,” Murad cried, gripping her elbow.
But Alex shook him violently off. Clenching her fists, sweating beneath her white bedouin robes, Alex watched as the block seemed to suddenly move a few inches, one edge now resting on the sledge.
A Turk called out, and immediately the block was propped up with wooden piles.
The slaves all dropped to the ground, very much like flies, apparently allowed a brief period of rest.
More tears filled Alex’s eyes. She reached blindly for Murad’s hand. “This is inhumane,” she whispered. “Those men are skin and bones. It must be a hundred and ten degrees in this sun—there’s no shade, no water, nothing. I don’t understand this!”
Murad shifted so that his hip touched hers. His fingers feathered her palm. “I told you we shouldn’t have come. Please, Alex, there is nothing to be gained by watching this. Let me take you home.”
“Where’s Xavier?”
“I don’t know. Alex, let’s go.” Murad turned to leave, but when Alex remained unmoving, he sighed. “Alex?”
Alex swallowed the lump in her throat. She raised a hand to shade her eyes and searched among the resting slaves for a sign of Blackwell.
He was down there, somewhere, engaged in this cruel, backbreaking labor, and she was not at liberty to aid him.
She wet her dry lips. It was time to grow up.
Time to face the inevitable. She would go to Jebal.
Somehow Jebal might be able to help. Blackwell could not remain in the quarries.
Maybe it was time for Alex to use all of her feminine powers over her husband.
Did she have another choice? Last night she should have pleased him instead of drugging herself and defying him.
Alex realized that now. But how could she approach him regarding Blackwell without making him suspicious? And did she really have a choice?
A Turk called out sharply. The slaves groaned, standing. It was then that Alex saw him.
He stood a head above the others, at the fringes of the group. He was waiting, with the others, for the next command.
Alex was hardly aware of striding forward and leaving Murad behind.
He cried out, reaching for the leads on both donkeys, quickly following.
Alex increased her stride, stumbling down the incline, her robes billowing around her.
She passed two Turkish soldiers who eyed her with little or no curiosity, and then she stopped short.
A harsh cry of shock and horror escaped from her mouth.
She was close enough to see Blackwell clearly, and his back was a raw, bleeding mass of welts.
At the sharp sound of her cry, his head whipped around. He saw her and all the color drained from his newly sunburned face.
Their gazes locked. His was wide-eyed.
He had recognized her. Alex ached for him. She felt as if her own heart were being physically ripped out of her body. She clenched her fists so hard that her nails bit into her palms. She wanted to run to him. She wanted to hold him, comfort him, heal him.
And then she realized that he was staring, and that his eyes were blazing. Alex could not identify the emotions mirrored there.
Murad grabbed her from behind. “There’s nothing you can do,” he snapped, dragging her backward. “We are returning to the palace.”