He smiled sadly. “That we must leave our future up to fate.”
She nodded and her eyes shone with her love for him. “Let us put our hope in that, André, inshallah, God willing, even if we cannot foresee our future.”
Chapter Seventeen
The closer they came to Mogador, the more humid the air grew. When they reached the city in the early afternoon, the outlines of the walls and the buildings were blurred by the low veils of mist, lending an eerie atmosphere to the place.
“Where are the caravans?” André wondered as they rode across the square in front of the city gate. Normally, at least a hundred camels loitered here, but today the place was empty. Apart from the sound of their own horses’ hooves and the wind driving dust clouds across the vast square, all was eerily still.
“The city gate is closed!” Sibylla cried. “And sundown is at least another two hours away!”
André studied the bastions. “Strange. Wait here, I shall survey the situation.” He threw his reins to Sibylla, went to the locked gate, and hit it with the butt of his rifle. “Hello! Open up!”
The muffled sound of boot steps came from inside. Next, gun barrels appeared out of the narrow slits directly above him.
“Watch out!” Sibylla screamed.
He took a few steps back, placed his hands around his mouth, and bellowed, “Open the gate!”
“Who goes there?” a voice barked back.
“Residents of this city!” André answered and gave their names. The gun barrels disappeared, then the locks and bolts were pushed aside and the gate was opened just enough for Sibylla and André and their horses to fit through. Several soldiers and the captain of the Black Guards—the one who had conducted the search of her house—were waiting for them. The men had their muskets trained on the pair.
“Dismount!” the captain ordered Sibylla.
She obeyed, utterly confounded. The soldiers took the reins, but André quickly stopped them. “Don’t touch these horses!” He turned to the captain. “Why are we being received like criminals?”
The captain’s expression grew even darker. “The horses are confiscated. Now come!”
“I wish to speak with the qaid!” André placed his hand on his weapon. At once, the soldiers surrounded him. Reluctantly, André relinquished his weapon and grumbled, “Gare a toi, if there isn’t a very good reason for this.”
Sibylla anxiously looked around. “I have to go home! I must know how my children are.” One of the soldiers shoved the barrel of his gun under her nose and she recoiled.
“You come!” the captain repeated threateningly.
She instinctively pressed herself against André. “What on earth happened while we were gone?”
Sibylla hardly recognized the cosmopolitan trading city as the guards marched them through Mogador. The houses appeared closed and forbidding, the people hostile. Sibylla saw no foreigners at all, but there were many locals coming toward them from the souk. She recoiled when an old man spat on the ground at their feet. Another uttered ugly curses and clenched his fists, and the women pulled their veils down farther and made the sign to avert the evil eye. She also noticed the soldiers’ demeanor. In all the years she had lived there, Sibylla had never seen them so battle-ready. It seemed as though the city was preparing itself for a siege. Whole companies armed to the teeth marched past. Artillery and donkey carts with cannonballs were being transported in the direction of the harbor bastions. Slaves rolled barrels behind them.
“Those must contain gunpowder,” André whispered.
“Do you think that now the French will bombard Mogador too?” Sibylla whispered back.
“Possibly.”
“Uskut, faransawi! Be silent!” One of the soldiers dug the barrel of his gun into André’s ribs.
Sibylla assumed that they were being taken to the qasbah, but the soldiers turned down a dead-end alleyway behind the western bastion.
“What are we doing here?” she exclaimed when she recognized the place.
“Uskuti!” the captain barked.
They had stopped before André’s secret Portuguese church. Sibylla could hardly believe her eyes: the old door with the rusty hinges was being guarded by several heavily armed guards.
“Inside!” Two soldiers shoved them through the door, letting it crash shut behind them.
There was fearful muttering in the interior. Sibylla smelled the odor of many people, sweat, vomit, excrement. She tried not to gag and squinted in the dim light. Men, women, and children were cowering close together. All the foreigners of Mogador were being held prisoner in this small church. Sibylla recognized her neighbors, the Willshires and the de Silvas, and all the other consuls and merchants and their wives.
“Mais ce n’est pas possible!” André muttered.
Sibylla scanned the crowd until she spotted Nadira, sitting on the edge under the clock tower, with Firyal close to her. Tom and Johnny were with them.
“Mummy!” The boys struggled to free themselves from the servants’ arms. Sibylla uttered a cry and ran to them.
“We’ve been held here since the soldiers came and pulled us out of our beds at dawn three days ago,” Consul Willshire told her as the excitement over the new arrivals died down. “We don’t know why. I have demanded an explanation from the qaid, but to no avail. They don’t let us out, but they leave us in peace. We get water and something to eat twice a day—”
“If you refer to that slop as food!” the French consul’s wife objected. “Many children are suffering from stomachaches and diarrhea!”
“And none of us has ever done anything to harm a Moor!” a Portuguese merchant said indignantly.
“Perhaps we all have to atone for the deeds of the slave trader,” a woman said and pointed accusingly to Sibylla. Hostile murmurs became louder.
André immediately stepped in front of her and her children. “The sultan himself has ordered the release of Mr. Hopkins. So he is innocent!”
“Can you prove that?” Consul Willshire asked.
Sibylla pulled out the scroll, which she had worn under her tunic this whole time, unfurled it, and held it up so that all could see the sultan’s seal. Again the murmurs grew, some in doubt, some in agreement.