“Haw! Stop! Now, that, as we say in Wapping, is Entertainment!”

“Only a Qwghlmian born and bred could have found her way across that flat without perishing. In a trice, he’d sunk down to his neck and was thrashing about in exactly the wrong way, hollering certain key verses of the Holy Qur’an.”

“And your mother said, ‘We could escape now, but we have a Christian duty to this poor sailor; we must sacrifice our freedom to save his life’ and you stayed there to help him out.”

“No, Mummy said something more like, ‘We could try to struggle away through all of this mud, but those darkies have muskets-so I’ll pretend to stay behind to help that stupid wog-maybe we can rack up some brown-nosing points.’”

“What a woman!”

“She commandeered an oar and extended it to the trapped sailor. Seeing she’d found solid footing, others made bold to leave the boat and haul this fellow in. Mummy and I were then subjected to a curious sniffing procedure administered by an officer who did not speak English, but who made it plain, by his posture and expressions, that he was embarrassed and apologetic. We were taken aboard the long-boat and then to the galley, and then rowed out to a rendezvous with a forty-gun pirate-galleon cruising offshore. Not some ramshackle barge but a proper ship of the line, captured or perhaps bought, leased, or borrowed from a European navy.”

“Where your mother was cruelly used by horny Mahometans.”

“Oh, no. These men seemed to be of that sort who only desire women for that which they have in common with men.”

“What-eyebrows?”

“No, no!”

“Toenails then? Because-”

“Stop it!”

“But the mercy that your Mum showed to the poor sailor was richly repaid later on, right? When, in a moment of crisis, unlooked-for, he appeared and showed her some favor, and thus saved the day-right?”

“He died a couple of days later, from bad fish, and was tossed overboard.”

“Bad fish? On a ship? In the ocean? I thought those Mussulmen were ever so particular about their victuals.”

“He didn’t eat it-just touched it while preparing a meal.”

“Why would anyone-”

“Don’t ask me,” Eliza said, “ask the mysterious Personage who subjected my Mummy to his unnatural vice.”

“I thought you said-”

“You asked me if she’d been used by Mahometans. The Personage was not a Mahometan. Or a Jew. Or any other sort that practices circumcision.”

“Er-”

“Would you like to stop, so that I can draw you a picture?”

“No. What sort of man was he, then?”

“Unknown. He never left his cabin in that high-windowed castle at the stern of the ship. It seemed he had a fear of sunlight, or at least of tanning. When Mummy was taken into that place, that curved expanse of glass was carefully shuttered, and the curtains drawn-heavy curtains they were, in a dark green shade like the skin of the aguacate, which is a fruit of New Spain. But with thread of gold woven through, here and there, to produce a sparkling effect. Before my mother could react, she was thrown back against the carpet-”

“You mean, down onto the carpet.”

“Oh, no. For the walls, and even the ceiling, of the cabin were lined, every inch of them, in carpet. Hand-knotted wool, with a most deep and luxurious pile (or so it seemed to Mummy, who’d never seen or touched a carpet before), all in a hue that recalled the gold of fields ripe for harvest-”

“I thought you said it was dark.”

“She came back from these trysts with the fibers all over her. And even in the dark she could feel, with the skin of her back, that cunning artisans had sculpted the golden carpet into curious patterns.”

“Doesn’t sound that bad, so far-that is, by the standards of white women abducted and enslaved by Barbary Corsairs.”

“I haven’t gotten to the part about the smell yet.”

“The world smells bad, lass. Best to hold your nose and get on with it.”

“You are a child in the world of bad smells, until-”

“Excuse me. Have you ever been to Newgate Prison? Paris in August? Strasbourg after the Black Death?”

“Think about fish for a moment.”

“Now you’re on about fish again.”

“The only food that the Personage would eat was fish that had gone bad-quite some time ago.”

“That’s it. No more. I’ll not be made a fool of.” Jack put his fingers in his ears and sang a few merry madrigal tunes with a great deal of “fa la la” material in them.

AFEW DAYS might have passed here-the road West was long. But in time she inevitably resumed. “The Barbary Corsairs were no less incredulous than you, Jack. But it was evident that the Personage was a man of tremendous power, whose wishes must be obeyed. Every day, some sailor who’d committed an infraction would be sentenced to dress the rotten fish for this man’s private table. He’d drop to his knees and beg to be flogged, or keel-hauled, rather than carry out that duty. But always one would be chosen, and sent over the side, and down the ladder-”

“How’s that?”

“The fish was ripened in an open long-boat towed far, far behind the ship. Once a day, it would be pulled up alongside, and the luckless sailor would be forced, at pistols drawn, to descend a rope-ladder, clutching a scrap of paper in his teeth on which was inscribed whatever receipt the Personage had selected. Then the tow-rope was hastily paid out again by a gagging team of sailors, and the chef would go to work, preparing the meal on a little iron stove in the long-boat. When he was finished, he’d wave a skull and crossbones in the air and be pulled in until he was just astern. A rope would be thrown out the windows of that gaudy castle-below, the chef would tie it to a basket containing the finished meal. The basket would be drawn up and in through the window. Later, the Personage would ring a bell and a cabin-boy would be heartily bastinadoed until he agreed to go aft to recover the china, and toss it overboard.”

“Fine. The cabin smelled bad.”

“Oh, this Personage tried to mask it with all the spices and aromatic gums of the East. The place was all a-dangle with small charms, cleverly made in the shape of trees, impregnated with rare perfumes. Incense glowered through the wrought-gold screens of exotic braziers, and crystalline vials of perfumed spirits, dyed the colors of tropical blossoms, sloshed about with great sodden wicks hanging out of ’em to disperse the scent into the air. All for naught, of course, for-”

“The cabin smelled bad.”

“Yes. Now, to be sure, Mummy and I had noticed an off odor about the ship from about a mile out, as we were being rowed to it, and had chalked it up to the corsairs’ barbarous ways and overall masculinity. We had watched the spectacle of the dinner preparation twice without understanding it. The second time, the chef-who, that day, was the very man Mummy had saved-never waved the Jolly Roger, but seemed to fall asleep in the long-boat. Efforts were made to rouse him by blowing horns and firing cannon-salvos, to no avail. Finally they pulled him in, and the ship’s physician descended the rope-ladder, breathing through a compress soaked in a compound of citrus oil, myrrh, spearmint, bergamot, opium, rose-water, camphor, and anise-seed, and pronounced the poor man dead. He had nicked his hand while chopping some week-old squid-meat, and some unspeakable residue had infected his blood and slain him, like a crossbow bolt ‘tween the eyes.”

“Your description of the Personage’s cabin was suspiciously complete and particular,” Jack observed.

“Oh, I was taken there, too-after Mummy failed the sniff-test, he flew into a rage, and in desperation they offered me up as a sacrifice. He got no satisfaction from me, as I’d not, at that age, begun to exude the womanly humours that-”

“Stop. Only stop. My life, since I approached Vienna, is become some kind of Bartholomew-Fair geek-baiting.”