The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [142]
“What is the alternative?”
“Surely you need not ask. Imprisonment, a considerable degree of discomfort, and eventually a trip to Constantinople, where you will have to face several persons who know you as one of our most dangerous opponents.” He leaned forward, his face lengthening. “They will execute you, my young friend, publicly and painfully, as an English spy, but before they kill you they will try to find out everything you know. I consider torture an unreliable means of extracting information, but I fear my enlightened views are not shared by the others in my service. I am offering you a chance to escape that fate. You are no assassin. You came here for another reason. I can protect you from a death that will cause your wife and your parents much grief if you confide in me and prove your sincerity by the alliance I have offered. I assure you, the girl is quite presentable.”
Increasingly bewildered, but reminded of his manners, Ramses said, “I am sure she is a pearl of rare beauty and a worthy child of her father. You would think less of me, however, if I betrayed my beliefs and my country for a woman, however desirable.”
“You would not be the first Englishman to do so.”
He fixed Ramses with a steady stare and Ramses considered how to respond. He wasn’t feeling very clever; insane questions kept popping into his head and it was all he could do to keep from blurting them out. “Anybody I know?” or “You wouldn’t be referring to my uncle, would you?” He wondered if there had been some drug in the tea after all, or if it was only the blow on the head that was clouding his thinking. Sahin couldn’t be serious. He was playing some sort of game and Ramses hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was really after.
“There have been several,” Ramses began. His voice echoed oddly inside his head. He tried to put the glass down. It tipped, spilling the rest of the tea across the floor. “Was that really necessary?” he asked thickly.
“A lesson, which you have not yet learned, it seems,” Sahin replied equably. “Never trust anyone’s word. Now come along like a good lad. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He clapped his hands. Two men entered. “Gently, gently,” Sahin crooned, as they pulled Ramses to his feet and half led, half dragged him out of the room, up a few steps and down a few, through the mazelike series of rooms and corridors that were typical of such houses. He was vaguely aware of staring faces, as indistinct as ghosts, and of soft exclamations. Eventually they escorted him down a long flight of stairs. The smell came up to meet him—wet stone, and mold, and the sickly sweetness of something rotten.
There were three doors along the short passage, heavy wood banded with iron. Two were closed. They took him into the third room, a stone-walled box barely six feet square and six high. Rodent bones and a thin layer of straw, liquescent with decay, littered the floor. The cell contained a rough wooden bench along one wall, a few crude earthenware vessels, and several sets of chains held by staples driven deep into floor and wall. Working with silent efficiency, as if they had gone through the procedure many times, the two guards deposited Ramses on the bench. Too dizzy to sit upright, he toppled forward; one of them had to hold him while the other raised his arms and locked the fetters round his wrists. They chained his feet, too, and then left.
“Faugh,” said Sahin Pasha, wrinkling his nose. “It’s even worse than I remembered. This house is a temporary loan, from a colleague of mine; my own prisons are more civilized. I will return in the morning to see if you have changed your mind.”
He drew his elegant robes tightly about him so they wouldn’t touch the filthy wall and backed away. The door slammed shut. The hinges creaked horribly. They would, of course.
Ramses sat with his head bowed, breathing steadily and slowly, hoping he wasn’t going to be sick. Gradually he got his stomach under control and strength began to return to his limbs. Cautiously he tested the fetters. The iron cuffs had simply snapped into place,