“Hello, Benjamin.”
“Sibylla!” He jumped up. The bowl slid off his knees and smashed on the hard floor. Sibylla was horrified to see a mouse flit out from under the bed and greedily fall upon the simple meal. But Benjamin paid it no mind.
“Finally! I was beginning to think you were going to let me rot in here. What is it, can I go? Is the qaid letting me go?” He rushed up to her.
“Let me have a look at you!” She almost did not recognize her own husband. He had grown so thin that the soiled suit hung from his shoulders. His cheeks and eyes were sunken. His hair was long and stringy, half his face covered with a matted beard. He smelled unwashed and she immediately began checking for fleas and lice. There was not much left of the Benjamin who used to wear tailor-made suits, silk vests, and diamond-studded cravat pins, who took daily baths and had his hands manicured so that they were softer than a woman’s.
“I brought you some things.” She placed her basket on the table.
He hastily rummaged through the contents. “Soap? Books? Underwear? Does this mean that I’m staying here? Have you made no attempts to get me released?”
“Well, actually, I’ve been drinking tea and going on picnics. Unfortunately, the picnics are quite lonely as all my former friends believe that my husband is a slave trader.”
He quickly softened his tone. “Don’t get upset, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I had to let them keep the razor,” she continued after a short pause. “But for a few dirhams, the commander promised to allow you to use it every morning.”
Benjamin reached for the newspapers and scanned the headlines. “Railway shares have risen in England. Just as I predicted! If I weren’t stuck here, I would invest. Railways are the future. I can feel it in my bones! But I’m not allowed to take care of any business here and meanwhile there are fifty camel-loads of leather rotting in the caravanserai. Spencer & Son is going to go bankrupt in Mogador.”
“It is not,” Sibylla proudly declared. “I have inspected the leather and had it shipped to England. I have already received the promissory note for our share.”
He sized her up. “Are you trying to steal my job?”
“I have preserved your job! The children and I have to eat and the servants need to be paid!” She was painfully disappointed. Why did he not praise her? Still, she forced herself to set aside her bitterness.
“No one in London knows what has happened. All I wrote to Father was that I was filling in for you for a time. But I need your advice, Benjamin. I have many questions.”
He placed his hand on her arm. His skin was rough and chapped, his fingernails black. “You are so clean,” he said quietly. “So incredibly clean.” He shuddered as though he wanted to dispel bad thoughts.
They sat side by side on a piece of grass on the shore. Somewhere behind them on one of the bastions, the commander was shouting orders. One could hear the cannons rattling and squeaking as they were positioned in front of the embrasures. But before them lay the seemingly endless Atlantic Ocean, smooth and silvery, empty but for a few fishing boats.
“Do you know what they’re doing up there on the bastion?” Sibylla asked.
Benjamin shook his head. “No idea. But it’s been going on for a few weeks. Perhaps they’re as bored as I am.”
With Sibylla’s intervention and dirhams, he had been permitted to wash and put on fresh clothes. Sibylla had untangled his matted hair. Except for his beard, he was once again beginning to resemble the man she knew.
“After my first three days here, I tried to escape,” he boasted.
Sibylla was horrified. “What? As though we didn’t have enough difficulties already!”
He grinned at her sideways. “I jumped in the water and was going to try to swim to one of the English ships that was anchored not too far from here. I’m a good swimmer, or have you forgotten our adventure in the harbor basin in London? Unfortunately, the Negroes came after me in their boat. The commander was fit to be tied. He locked me up for three weeks. Now he lets me out again. But they’ve been keeping a closer eye on me—and on the boat too.”
Sibylla looked at two small emerald-green lizards sunning themselves on the warm earth. “And how is your treatment overall?”
He shrugged. “They leave me alone. We can hardly communicate anyhow. Neither the Moors nor the Negroes speak English, and my Arabic, well, you know how that is.”
“And what do you do all day?”
“Every morning, I walk around the island. That takes me two hours. The rest of the day is rather monotonous,” he replied vaguely.
He did not want to tell her that his solitude was making him strange, that he carried on quiet conversations with the rabbits, and that he had tried to teach tricks to the mice scurrying through his cell.
“Is Willshire making any effort to free me? I must get off this island, for God’s sake!” he suddenly exclaimed. “You have to find out what they’re planning to do with me! Last night, I dreamed the sultan was going to behead me!”
“Willshire has sent a letter to Consul General Drummond-Hay in Tangier to ask him to protest your arrest officially,” Sibylla tried to reassure him. “But you have to bear up a bit longer. We both know that clocks in the Orient tick differently.”
“No! I have to get off this island. Write to your father, to the queen, bribe the qaid, but do something!”
“The qaid has already helped himself. His people ransacked our house and took everything.”
“What?” Benjamin grabbed her arm. “Where did they look? What did they find?”
“Ouch! You’re hurting me!” She tried to free herself. “They took your coffer and the money I earned through my trade with the governor’s wives.”
“That’s all?”
“What do you mean? It was everything we had!”
“Yes, of course. I was thinking of the furniture, china, and such,” he added hastily.
“Isn’t that bad enough? Let go of me! First thing tomorrow morning, I’m riding to Marrakesh to ask Abd al-Rahman to release you. So you see, I’m doing everything I can.”
“What? The sultan has agreed to see you?”
“Monsieur Rouston has arranged for an audience. He is going to escort me there and advocate for your release. The sultan trusts him more than any other foreigner in this country.”
Benjamin glared at her furiously. “You most certainly are not going to ride to Marrakesh with that slick Frenchman and make a laughingstock of me! I won’t allow it.”
“I’m afraid you will have to unless you want to stay on this island even longer,” she countered.
“I want nothing to do with Rouston,” he grumbled. But he expressed no further objections to her plan.
“Will you finally tell me if there is something to the accusations against you?” Sibylla urged. “Did you truly have human beings transported on my father’s ships and sold into slavery? You owe me an explanation, Benjamin.”
He swallowed hard and turned away. “I can’t believe what you’re accusing me of,” he muttered. “You’re no better than the qaid.”