Monty is being outfitted with a similar torture device, and he’s forced to surrender his grip on his trousers as his arms are forced into the manacles. They drop around his ankles. He’s putting up a good protest, both louder and peppered with more curse words than I would have the gumption to use to guards with muscles this large and sabers this sharp, particularly while less trousers. “Montague!” he keeps shouting. “Felicity Montague! I know you know us! I’ve got the goddamn ink—why else did I show you my ass?”
“Monty—” is all I manage before one of the women grabs the beam I’m chained to and hauls me back to my feet. My arms are pinned in place parallel with my head, and the angle makes the muscles in my shoulders burn. The guards search us roughly for weapons—from Monty, they take a small knife, a pipe and tobacco case, a used handkerchief, and half a biscuit of hardtack. “Don’t throw that away,” he says as one of the men sniffs at it. I am relieved of my passport and documentation, money, and, most importantly, the spyglass. The guards pass it around curiously before one of them stows it with the rest of our possessions.
We are then pushed forward down the passage the guards came from. The light is poor—only a few unshaded candles stuck into iron sconces dot the walls. The stone is washed white, and painted all over with the same unfamiliar language that’s in the streets.
I try to go as cooperatively as possible—perhaps, instead of being executed, I could be a prisoner for life, that would be preferable—maybe—I have no idea, having never considered that particular devil’s bargain. Behind me, Monty’s progress is impeded by his trousers, which are still around his ankles.
The hallway opens onto a balcony overlooking an octagonal room, closed off and steamy. It’s framed with the same arches as the courtyard we came from, these tiled in deep sapphire and each with a lamp dangling from its center, their colorful glass panes angled to cast light all around them. The walls are tiled too, intricate tessellating patterns speckled with condensation. Fountains are built into the walls at either end of the room, draining into tiled tubs built into the floor. Steam rises from the long slats between them. In the center of the room is a raised stone platform, surrounded by a small moat of crystal-clear water. The stone looks lustrous, like it’s been polished for the last thousand years.
The guards lead us down to the main floor. The steam envelops us, leaving me feeling hot and dewy almost at once.
My clothes stick to me in a way that makes me too aware of their seams and the shape of my body on display. As we walk the narrow aisles between the baths, the women soaking there peer up at us curiously. Most of them seem unbothered by the presence of men among them, though I realize that aside from the guards escorting us, all the sentries around the perimeter are women, their hair covered and twin swords at their waists.
One of the guards stops before the stone dais and extends a hand to the woman reclining upon it. Steam curls around her limbs and pearls on her skin. She ignores his hand, and instead slides to the edge of the stone and sits up. She’s completely naked, and I look away, blushing, though she seems unbothered by it. One of the guards hands her a cloth to dry off, and I hazard a glance, only to find that she has simply tossed it over her shoulder. I try to look without looking. Her skin is olive, and her dark hair cascades down her back, its ends spattered with what looks like clay. She has wide hips and a soft belly, and her skin is flawless. She looks like a Venus carved from stone and leafed in copper.
Monty and I are both shoved to our knees before her as she takes up a long-stemmed copper pot and pours a stream of golden oil into her hands. It drips between her fingers like honey and runs down her legs and into the water. We are forced to crane our necks at a cramping angle to see her, though I’m still not sure where to look. She’s so comfortably disrobed that it makes me somehow more uncomfortable with it. Monty has lost his trousers somewhere along the hallway, and the tail of his shirt barely covers his most vulnerable bits.
As the woman begins to slick the oil up and down her arms and shoulders, the guard who searched us drops the contents of our pockets on the stone beside her. She doesn’t look at them, but continues to massage her skin as the guard speaks to her in their language, presumably giving an account of how we came to be kneeling and chained and trouserless before her. When she pulls back her hair, I notice the same symbol Monty has on the back of her neck.
Something the guard says makes her cock her head, and she holds a hand to halt him, then turns her glittering eyes to Monty. “You’re one of the Hoffmans,” she says in French.
“I’m not a Hoffman,” Monty replies. “I work for them. I run their shipping office in London. Who are you?”
“Basira Khan,” she replies. “I am the Crown and Cleaver’s governor of Rabat.”
“Congratulations,” Monty replies. “Now please release us. I showed your soldiers my ink—we have an alliance with the Crown and Cleaver. We’re looking for Felicity Montague—”
Basira spits on the ground and Monty and I both jump. “That whore,” she hisses.
Monty looks taken aback. “Well, that’s . . . new.”
“That traitor.” Basira snatches a billowing kaftan offered by a servant girl and pulls it over her head. “If I see her in our territory again, I’ll cut her throat myself.”
“Are we talking about the same Felicity?” Monty asks weakly.
Basira flips her hair from the neck of her caftan and stands, beckoning another servant girl over to her with a teapot. “And the throats of any of the men she sends into our territory.”
“To be clear, she did not send us,” Monty says. “We came looking.”
“Well, you will not find her here. She broke the accords set out when she was welcomed into this court.” Basira takes a delicate gold cup from the tray offered her and raises it to her lips, but pauses to add derisively, “I never wanted her here—her or that other European girl. All white women are the same. They think they’re oppressed by you men so they look for somewhere else to be queen. And now there’s you—more white men with Felicity Montague.”
“We’re not with her!” Monty says. “We came here trying to find her, not carry on whatever traitorous whorishness she has committed.”
Basira stares at us, eyes narrowing, then sets down her tea and says, “Felicity Montague is gone.”
“Gone, as in . . .” Monty looks as though he isn’t sure he wants the answer. “Is she dead?”
“Gone, as in banished,” Basira replies. “She was put on trial, and the governors of the Crown and Cleaver voted to have her marooned by Commodore Aldajah for her crimes. Crimes her allies will answer for as well.”
“Look here.” Monty tries to stand, overbalances with the additional weight of the board strapped to his shoulders, and tips, catching himself on one knee like he’s proposing marriage. The tails of his shirt ride up perilously high. “Obviously there’s been some mistake.”
Basira makes a show of turning away from him, clearly not listening, and starts going through our things with what feels like a deliberate invasiveness—she licks her fingers as she turns the pages of my travel documents, then sticks Monty’s pipe between her teeth.