AUTHOR’S NOTE
This story takes place at a time when European girls really were captured by the
Barbary Corsairs and sold in the slave markets of North Africa.
Such women really were totally at the mercy of the rich men who owned them, and of
the black eunuchs who supervised them. The Barbary States did have a reputation for
treating Christian slaves unbelievably harshly, almost as animals, and there actually were
slave breeding farms in the Ottoman Empire ... and although you won’t find Marsa on the
map, it could well have been there.
The principal naval powers were busy fighting each other - the long drawn out war
between Britain and Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France started in 1793 and only
ended with the battle of Waterloo twenty-two years later - and this gave the Corsairs
great freedom of action. This period also saw the elimination of one of their main
enemies, the Knights of Malta. Thus, at the time of this story, the Corsairs had an almost
free rein to plunder and kidnap along the coasts and islands of Southern Europe.
By this time they had replaced their sea-going galleys with fast sailing craft such
as Polacca-Chebecs, which carried a mixture of European style square sails and Arab style
lanteen sails. The demand for large numbers of young male Christian galley slaves had
therefore dwindled. Instead, many of the Corsos, as the raids were called, concentrated
more on capturing young women and boys.
In 1798, for instance, only a few years before the setting of this novel, Barbary
Corsairs from Tunis carried off almost a thousand women and children in one raid on the
island of San Pietro, off Sardinia. Years later some were ransomed, but many had been sold
off in the slave markets and were never seen again.
So although what follows is fiction, the background is realistic and those of a
squeamish disposition are advised not to read the books in this series.
For a more serious study of the period I would recommend books such as Stephen
Clissold’s ‘The Barbary Slaves’ (Elek Books), Noel Barber’s ‘Lords of the Golden Horn’
(Macmillan), ‘Harem, the World Behind the Veil’ by Lytle Croutier (Bloomsbury), and books
about the Knights of Malta.
PROLOGUE
It was early in 1810 that I, renegade Irishman though I was, found myself being
sent to Malta on a delicate mission by my superior, the Pasha of Marsa, a port on the
North African coast.
I made quite a stir when, attended by Tulip, my page boy, I strode into the crowded
ballroom in the former palace of the Grand Masters in Valletta, where the British
Commissioner, Captain Sir Alexander Ball, had invited me to a ball he was giving.
I was in my somewhat exotic full dress uniform as a senior officer of the
Janissaries, the elite troops of the Turkish Empire: blue embroidered tunic, yellow boots,
baggy Turkish shalwar trousers and a strangely shaped tall felt hat surmounted with Birds
of Paradise plumes.
It was there that, later in the evening, I was accosted by this fiery Irish girl,
Barbara Kennedy.
“So, Sir,” she demanded, almost as soon as she was alone with me, “you call
yourself an Irish gentleman!”
“Indeed!” I replied.
“And what sort of an Irish gentleman is it who is no more than the disgraced scion
of one of your wretched penniless Protestant ascendancy families!”
I started back. Evidently I was talking to a Catholic with strong Republican views.
It was of course only ten years since the Wexford Rebellion, the Battle of Vinegar Hill,
and the death of Wolfe Tone.
“And is it not true,” she went on, “that you who call yourself an Irishman have a
harem of Arab wives?”
I could feel my face beginning to cloud with anger at this pretty woman’s
ill-mannered approach. Her aggressive attitude made me a little more provocative than I
would normally have been, and for a moment the discretion that my mission demanded was
forgotten.
“Not wives, Miss Kennedy,” I replied coldly. “Not wives! Concubines is the correct
term for them. Concubines, if you please.”
“Concubines!” she cried. “Concubines, is it! You mean slaves, no doubt! You mean
you keep a harem of slave girls? You’ll be telling me next that you beat the poor
creatures when the fancy takes you.”
“My black eunuchs certainly beat them if they do not please me,” I said. I was
controlling myself with difficulty, for it was intolerable for this rude and outspoken
chit of a girl to broach such private matters in public.
“Oh!” she shouted out loudly, so that people turned to stare at us, “black eunuchs
is it now! Holy Mother of God, what a monster you are! It’s just as well it’s only
ignorant Arab girls that you have!”
“As a matter of fact, Miss Kennedy,” I said, really angry with her now, “I, like,
most other Moslems in my position in Marsa, where I come from, have several beautiful and
well educated Christian girls in my harem. Some of them look very like the ladies here
tonight and two of them are very like you!”
The Irish girl spluttered and went white with passion. She stamped a delicate foot
in outrage, but seemed unable to speak. “Like me!” she got out at last, “LIKE ME!”
She was glaring at me so fiercely that I almost took a step backwards. Instead I
looked straight into those fiery eyes. “Like you,” I repeated. “More polite, of course.
Prettier, perhaps!”
She gulped and paused to regroup, then changed her attack, as women will.
“I don’t believe a word of it ... and what about this pretty page-boy?” She pointed
at Tulip who was standing dutifully behind me. “Just where he does he fit into this story
of barbaric lust?”
“His name is Tulip. The Turks would call him a ‘garzon’. He accompanies me
everywhere, especially when I am travelling or visiting the women in my harem.”
“Oh! Oh! You brute! You brute!” Again she stamped a delicate foot. I dare say I
would have found her attractive under other circumstances - once she had learned to keep a
civil tongue in her head. “So you really are a Moslem, now!”
The way she spat out the word Moslem made it into an insult, but I still held my
temper in check. My attachment to that religion was really only skin deep, little more
than a convenience, but I was damned if I was going to say so to this rude little bitch of
a girl.
“A Moslem?” I repeated. “Yes indeed, I am a follower of the true Prophet. I am
proud of it, just I am also proud of owning my European concubines, slave girls captured
by the corsairs and sold in the slave markets of Marsa. You can look as shocked as you
like, but in the eyes of a True Believer they are mere infidel Christian dogs to be used
for whatever purpose their Master may decide ... But, my dear Miss Kennedy, I should add
that no matter how cheap European slave girls may be in Marsa, I doubt if any high ranking
Turk there would wish to add a nasty little spitfire like you to his collection. So you
would be quite safe, if you were ever captured. You’d probably just be used as a beast of
burden, part of the live-stock of some farm.”
“You swine! You miserable wretch of an arrogant Protestant land-owning swine!”
She was screaming at me, quite out of control.
Unfortunately I laughed, and it was then that she made a real enemy of me.
She actually had the temerity to to strike me on the cheek, twice, with her glove.
And I could not lift a hand to her, not in that company! No, I had to contain my
fury as best I could, knowing that they were all sniggering at me - but also knowing that
my mission would be prejudiced, perhaps irretrievably ruined, if I reacted in any way.
“I shall not forget this, Miss Kennedy,” I murmured quietly. “I hope for your sake
that our paths do not cross in the future.”
Then I bowed and walked away, leaving her speechless.
She certainly needed to be taught a few sharp lessons in civility and
respectfulness. Little did I think then that I was later to help provide them, nor that
she would end up ... as she has done.
I commanded her to write down her story in her own words. I think you will enjoy
it more than she did ...
PART ONE
I BECOME A SLAVE
Chapter 1
SHIPWRECKED
Just as I thought I would drown in the rough seas, I suddenly felt myself flung
onto a sandy beach. With what seemed to be my last ounce of strength I struggled against
the undertow - and won!
Slowly I crawled up the beach out of reach of the surf. It was pitch dark. The gale
shrieked, blowing the sand along in its wake. I found myself in a little half sheltered
dip with long grass around me. Exhausted, I collapsed onto the soft sand, still spitting
out the sea water that I had swallowed.
Was I alone, I wondered, in surviving the shipwreck? The fishing craft, a luzzu,
had been caught in a Gregale, the sudden fierce North Easterly Gale that could sweep down
across the straits between Italy and North Africa. Forced to flee before the wind, the
little craft had been blown down towards the Barbary Coast.
Suddenly in the heaving darkness she had hit a rock. In a few minutes she had
broken up. The three Maltese fishermen had been swept overboard. Luckily I was a good
swimmer, thanks to holidays spent on the wild West coast of Ireland when I was a young
girl. I just had time to to get most of my heavy clothes off, before I too had been swept
into the raging sea, leaving all my possessions to the elements.
Too exhausted to think, I curled up in the shelter of my little dip in the beach
and fell asleep.
***
It was daylight when I awoke. The wind had dropped and the sun was shining. My only
garment, a thin shift, was almost dry. I could hear the surf still pounding on the beach.
I raised my head and saw an empty beach between two headlands. Some hundreds of yards out
to sea was a spray covered line of rocks where the fishing boat must have foundered, but
there was no sign left of her, apart from a few planks on the beach.
I stood up, shaky and weak from my ordeal, naked except for my shift. I called the
names of the fishermen. There was no reply, and no sign of them. I was alone, quite alone.
I walked along the beach, looking for any signs of my possessions.
There were none.
No one would know what had happened to me, not the authorities in Malta, not my
employer in Sicily, and not my family or betrothed back in Ireland. I, and the crew of the
fishing boat, would simply be assumed to have perished in the storm.
I was twenty four, a well educated but poor Catholic Irishwoman, who bitterly
resented the British occupation of my country. I was regarded as a pretty young girl, and
my cousin, Dermot, had asked me to marry him as soon he inherited his Great Uncle’s farm.
But meanwhile, to earn my living, I had taken the post, two years before, of Governess in
the household of the British Ambassador to the Court of the King of Naples. In fact King
Ferdinand had been forced by French troops to flee to Palermo in Sicily several years
previously, and there he was protected by British troops and by the Royal Navy. Meanwhile
the French had set up a puppet King of their own in Naples, first Joseph, Napoleon’s older
brother, and then Marshal Murat, his brother-in-law.
I had gone to Malta to buy English books for my young charges. A few days after
that awful scene with the Irish Bey, I found a Maltese fishing boat that was leaving for
nearby Sicily and persuaded them to take me as a passenger, so that I could get back to my
employers.
And now here I was shipwrecked somewhere in Barbary!
Barefoot and walking with care, I started to make my way inland, following a path
that led up to a small hill. I was hungry and thirsty. I came across a little stream,
leading down towards the beach, and drank eagerly. But I was still hungry as I continued
up the path.
At last I reached the top of the hill, and looked down the other side. Some fifty
feet below me was a little gorge and, a track running through it, and I saw the marks of
wheels.
Civilisation!
Indeed I soon heard the noise of wheels approaching. I was about to run down to the
track when I remembered that I was half naked and in the Barbary Coast. Hesitantly, I lay
down in the long grass, and hidden from the track, looked down into the gorge.
Into view came a typical Mediterranean two wheeled country cart, pulled by a
donkey. It was laden with farm produce: vegetables and live chickens in wooden cages - all
apparently being taken to market. Driving it was a Negro in a long brown robe and a
coloured turban.
But it was the girl who caught my eye. She was running along behind the cart. A
light chain ran from the back of the cart to an iron collar fastened round her neck. Her
wrists were also loosely chained, and she was trying to hold a shawl over her shoulders.
Except for the shawl she was naked.
The Negro driver paid no attention to her as he occasionally plied his whip to the
donkey. The girl made no protest as she ran along behind the cart. It was if she was used
to being treated just as another animal being taken to market.
Her skin was white.
I shivered with fright.
Tortured by thoughts of slavery, I lay in my hiding place, warmed by the autumn
sun.
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