Jeanette's Love: Story of Napoleonic Wars (The Soldier and the Spy Chronicles, Tales of Historical Adventure and Romance - Book 2) by Longward Alaric

Author:Longward, Alaric [Longward, Alaric]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Hardhill Productions
Published: 2015-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Life did change for the people around us, but not so for me. I was given duties to clean and scrub each and every day. I would scrub certain rooms and then scrub them again until they shone. I swore I could see depressions on some parts of the marble I got to know so intimately. It was hard work though they did not make me suffer beatings or mockery while I worked. That is, if I at least tried to make proper work of it. I did try, for I did not wish to feel the cane the wiry eunuch seemed to carry around solely to keep my back bruised, Boquq having passed his duties to the smaller man.

I felt curiously like a child, the lack of respect and meaningful duties heavy on me, resenting my low position. Even though I knew, in the back of my head, I sometimes acted like a mule. In a week's time, my muscles started to attune to the hard work, and the mindlessness of it all was strangely comforting, my festering impatience tethered by such simple duties and the rigorous scrubbing that did not allow me time to worry.

Occasionally, when I looked over to the square, I was astonished. I saw the French army had indeed taken over the city. The French flags were everywhere. On the courtyard nearby, merry French officers and soldiers were enjoying plays by Christian and Jewish actors. There were coffee shops rising all over the square by enterprising merchants, invading areas previously reserved for the rich, and all over the city this industriousness was taking place, as well. I was sure, as I tried to peer at the activity further away, there was a damned restaurant near the end of the square, a European-style restaurant with menus on tables under some shady trees. I could not believe my eyes. For the first time in a long while, I missed Paris, and its many lucrative pleasures. Not that I ever had had coin to visit a restaurant in Paris.

One morning, there was a shuffling noise, a sure mark of the mistress of the house approaching. I glanced to see Sitt Nafisa in an elegant kaftan. She came to me and smirked as I was staring at the square, just before I was supposed to start scrubbing. 'Yes, people know how to make money. Many of your soldiers did set up clever businesses, now that they have the coins to spare,' Sitt Nafisa said, her face grimly amused as she looked over the city.

The coins had come from the turbans of the dead Mamelukes and looted palaces. I glanced at the hallway where Kaseem was quartered, and felt anger to share my imprisonment with him. Why had God not let him die? I shook my head with barely concealed anger as I gazed at Sitt Nafisa. I knew she had been praying. The muezzin still called the faithful to prayers across the city full of French soldiers.

'What is happening?' I asked her, interested despite myself.

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