“Highness.”

He turned at the soft voice of Hassan Aga, his minister. “Is it time?” he asked.

“Soon, highness. Today you have but four judgments to render.” Hassan paused a moment, negligently smoothing his white wool sleeve. “One of the men, a wealthy spice merchant, wishes to pay you his respects, in the form of piastres.”

“Was the man subtle in his bribery, Hassan?”

“Not at all, highness.”

“You will point him out to me so that I may look upon the man who would seek to buy justice.”

“Yes, highness.” Hassan, a smile on his leathered face, started to turn. His eyes shadowed a moment as he said, “Your esteemed mother wishes to speak to you, highness.” He bowed and left Kamal to prepare for his entrance into the large formal chamber reserved for greeting visitors to the Bey.

Before Kamal turned to his mother, he straightened his full-sleeved shirt and his leather vest, and adjusted his wide, soft red leather belt.

“Mother,” he greeted her.

“Yes, my son.”

He dutifully bestowed a kiss upon her upturned cheek, and switched easily to Italian. “You are well?”

“Ah yes,” she said. “I heard that fool Hassan tell you of the merchant’s offered bribe.”

“Hassan a fool?”

His voice was carefully neutral. He had learned quickly upon his return to Oran that his mother was jealous of anyone who could influence him. Her possessiveness surprised him, for she knew him as little as he did her.

Giovanna Giusti, formerly of Genoa, now the mother of Oran’s Bey, shrugged her slender shoulders. “He could simply have accepted the bribe and filled your coffers, my son. There was no need for you to know, and if your judgment had gone against the merchant, he could have said nothing. He is beneath your notice, or should be.”

“There is no justice in that, madam,” Kamal said. “If I did not render honest judgments, where would the people go?”

Giovanna shrugged again, impatiently. “Does it matter so much to you?”

Kamal found himself thinking like a Muslim for a moment, believing that he could not expect a woman to have any notion of honor or duty. He studied her silently. She was still a remarkably fine-looking woman, still possessed of much of the exquisite beauty that had captured his father’s roving eyes so long ago. She was slight, reaching only his shoulder, and as slender as a girl. Her hair was inky black—dyed, he suspected—with no trace of gray. But despite the care she took, there were lines on her face, bitter lines that deepened when she spoke of anything or anyone Muslim. He had given her a measure of power when he became Bey of Oran, power at least over the women, until he discovered she had placed Hamil’s widow, Lella, in a small, airless chamber fit only for a slave. When he had asked her why she had done it, she had lifted her narrow black brows in astonishment. “Lella is nothing, my son. She deserves to be sold, indeed, I think it would be best. It should be done before her belly swells.”

“By God, Mother the woman carries Hamil’s child. Her son will be my nephew, and my heir until I take a wife and breed my own son.”

“Your heir.”

He had realized suddenly that she considered Lella and her unborn child a threat. To her or to him? he had wondered, staring at her. “Yes, my heir,” he had told her. “Nothing will happen to Lella, Mother. Nothing. She and her unborn child are under my protection. Do you understand?”

Her face had smoothed out, as if by magic, into submissiveness. “Of course, my son. Forgive me. I will see that Lella is housed as befits her station. I am only concerned that you, Alessandro, be given what is due you.”

“Is there something you wanted, Mother?” he asked her now, a hint of impatience in his voice. “I haven’t much time. Hassan awaits me.”

Her dark eyes studied him before she lowered her head before him and murmured in a soft voice, “Perhaps later we can speak again, Alessandro.”

“Yes,” he said. He w

atched her pull her veil back over her face and walk gracefully toward the women’s quarters.

The ceremony that attended the Bey when he rendered judgments to his people had been nearly the same for over two hundred years. Kamal strode into the large sunlit chamber, its only furnishings his high-backed chair set upon a dais and a narrow table where his scribe sat, taking notes of the proceedings. He was flanked by Hassan Aga and a half-dozen of his Turkish soldiers, more for show than for protection. Their faces were expressionless, and they wore flamboyant red-and-white uniforms and highly polished scimitars fastened at their waists.

Kamal turned to face the afternoon’s supplicants, and sat stiffly in the heavily ornate chair, brought from Spain by his father, Khar El-Din. He nodded to his minister, Hassan, who began to recount the first case, that of the spice merchant Hajj Ahmad, a fat man of middle years, the man who had wished to bribe Kamal. When Hassan gravely told the merchant to begin, Hajj Ahmad moved to speak before Kamal, his hands folded before him. His beard was liberally threaded with white and his nose was reddened from too many years of good spirits. His voice, somewhat to Kamal’s surprise, was soft and cultured. Kamal studied him carefully as he spoke.

“This man, highness,” Hajj Ahmad said with immense dignity, turning slightly to point to a slight, swarthy man older than he, “cheated me of payment. I had spices delivered to his store, and he refused to honor the terms of our agreement.”

Kamal looked intently into the man’s eyes, as his half-brother, Hamil, and his father, Khar El-Din, had taught him. Unless a man is the greatest scoundrel on earth, you will see the way to justice in his eyes.

Tags: Catherine Coulter Devil Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net