Read Online VOYAGE OF STRANGERS by Elizabeth Zelvin - Free Book Online

body twisting to get free and her feet still kicking well above the ground.
    The child caught Rachel’s eye and mouthed a few words that she didn’t understand. She shook her head very slightly, hoping not to attract the guard’s attention. The girl frowned and moved her lips silently once again.
    “Wait. Be ready,” she mouthed. Her gaze darted around the crowd, scanning it in all directions, then back to Rachel.
    Rachel cast a puzzled look about. All the faces she could see looked hostile: some angry, some gleeful to see gypsies taken into custody. 
    The child hissed at her and repeated, “Wait. Be ready.”
    The daggers seemed to fly out of nowhere, one hitting the steel helmet of one of Rachel’s captors with a loud ping , another piercing the leather corselet of one of the child’s jailors high in the shoulder. Yet another dagger grazed the cheek of the third, while a volley of stones rattled against the helmet of the fourth, two or three striking him in the face so that he cursed. All of them dropped their prisoners’ arms, while the rest of the soldiers whirled and drew their swords, though their enemy remained invisible. The onlookers, who had crowded close to enjoy the spectacle of somebody else in trouble, now started screaming and trampling one another in their haste to get away from a fracas in which they might actually get hurt.
    The little girl landed neatly on her feet and grabbed Rachel’s hand as tightly as the soldiers had held her arms.
    “Run!” she said.
    She suited the action to the word, pulling Rachel along at a pace that left her gasping. As they fled through the panicked crowd, the girl gave a piercing whistle, followed by a stream of words in a language Rachel didn’t  recognize. Both were answered, and the child changed course to pull Rachel in that direction, zigzagging to throw off pursuit. When Rachel threw a quick look over her shoulder, the uproar seemed no more than the normal hubbub of the market, and the soldiers had been swallowed up in the sea of folk going about their business.

    Chapter Nine
     
    Cordoba, April 26, 1493
    We combed the market for over an hour without finding Rachel. We did find a well, in the opposite direction from where Rachel had claimed to see water spouting. But even filling a water skin and pouring its entire contents over my head didn’t  refresh me. Imagining what might have happened to her made sweat break out on my forehead again a moment later.
    “We must inquire of both the soldiers and the hermandad ,” Doña Marina said. We had seen small bands of both these bodies going about their business. The men at arms took up this idea with enthusiasm.
    “It stands to reason she would seek their help,” Esteban said.
    “If not, they might at least have seen her,” Hernan said.
    Their broad, kind faces looked worried, for they had grown fond of Rachel, who treated them like indulgent uncles. I could not tell them that it would be folly for Rachel to attract the attention of either the civil guards or the military, especially without a cross about her neck. Doña Marina intervened.
    “Esteban, can you find a station to which these men must return?”
    “That’ll be the guardhouse, my lady. It’s easily found, for they are usually located near the quarter where—”
    He broke off, redfaced, by which I deduced that he would search first in the quarter where men might seek the company of loose women. That brought to my mind another horror to add to my dire imaginings of what might befall Rachel if we failed to find her.
    “Do so, then,” Doña Marina said. “Make inquiries there. You, Hernan, must seek out a decent inn, for we will not leave Cordoba until Raquel is found. You and I, Diego, will remain here in the shade until they return.” She cast a sharp but not unkind look at me. “Don’t despair: it accomplishes nothing. If Raquel is wandering lost, it is likely she will think to seek us here, where she last saw us.”
    I could not