27 EPILOGUE:
CAPTAIN BARNABAS STEELE - was never heard from again and officially listed as lost at sea. His bleached bones are said to decorate a lonely beach somewhere in the Greek isles. Nonetheless, his home town in Devon ... improbably named, Rodent-Racing-by-the-Sea ... eventually erected a statue overlooking the harbor in his honor. Like many of its young men, Barnabas went to sea to seek his fortune and make his way in the world. In the town pub, however, after downing a few, the locals who knew him would often allow privately that the bastard probably got what he deserved.
LADY PRUDENCE - served four years as a sex slave to the Spanish dandy who purchased her from Mehmet Ali that fateful night in Istanbol. He treated her well and taught her every every technique there was to delight him and his associates. After four years, he granted her freedom and sent her back to England with a hefty purse, which she used to open a house of ill repute somewhere north of the capital and not too far from Cruxton, the ancestral home of Lady Barbara and her father, the Duke. It is said that the Duke was a frequent visitor at her establishment and paid to have a small dungeon built in the cellar where he often entertained himself and a few friends.
LADY BARBARA - was rescued and taken on board an American naval vessel after a brief encounter between the Americans and Karim Assaraf. She stood on deck as the frigate departed Tripoli harbor and cheerily waved farewell to the pirate and her former maid servant. On arrival in America, she made the social rounds in New York for nearly a year before booking passage back to England and home to Cruxton ... only to find that her father, the Duke, was furious with her for besmirching the family name by carrying on with infidels. After several consecutive nights of being thrashed in the cellar of the family manor, she left for London where she leaked the scandalous truth about her father's nocturnal habits to a Times reporter, causing a scandal that ended the Duke’s ambitions for public office. Shortly thereafter she returned to America, and married a rich Virginia planter whom she eventually cajoled (making the best of her feminine charms ... the Sehzade would have been proud) into freeing all of his slaves.
KARIM ASSARAF - After his misadventures in Istanbul and his encounter with the American fleet off Tripoli, which ended the sanctuary offered to pirates by ports on the Barbary Coast, he decided that the days of piracy on the high seas were numbered. He returned to Rabat where he and his brother Tarik established a bank in the family name. They found that that way, they could continue to practice piracy and it would all be perfectly legal, as long as they got around the strictures against charging interest in Islamic law by calling it "fees”.
MARY - Went to Rabat, married Karim, and had nine children with him. She never returned to England and died in Rabat surrounded by her numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
THE DUKE OF CRUXTON - Was never appointed Foreign Minister after being caught in flagrante delicto with a French whore in the pay of Napoleon by a reporter for the Times, acting on a tip from the Duke's estranged first daughter. The scandal ended his chances for public office, but not his taste for women and debauchery. Late in life he became a denizen of the most notorious casinos in Europe, where he frittered away the family fortune on gambling, women and liquor. He died penniless.
SULTAN SELIM III (true history) - Was a reforming Sultan who tried to modernize the Ottoman Empire, instituting a system of state schools and universities and modernizing the military. That military modernization was seen as a threat by the Janissaries who deposed him in 1806 and replaced him with his cousin Mustafa. Soon after, Selim was assassinated in the seraglio by the Black Eunuch (or so the story goes).
THE SEHZADE - Was hoping that he would become Sultan when the Janissaries deposed his brother. However they selected cousin Mustafa instead, possibly because Kemal Agha feared that the Sehzade would try to take his revenge for embarrassing him over the aborted execution of his English Lady. Thwarted in his ambitions, he indulged in an orgy of indiscriminate slave buying and died of syphilis contracted from one that hadn’t been properly vetted.
KEMAL AGHA - Led the Janissary revolt that deposed Selim. He remained a powerful figure at the court, playing one faction against another, for two more decades until the Janissaries were disbanded in 1826 by Sultan Mahmud II. They revolted against the order, but this time the revolt was crushed and Kemal was beheaded at the very place where Lady Barbara, Karim and the maid servant Mary narrowly escaped the same fate.
LADY KATHERINE - was freed from slavery after four years. She returned to England and settled into a relatively quiet and secluded life in a small village in Kent. A young woman of boundless imagination and will, she made a name for herself writing and publishing exciting, and certainly risque for the times, tales of women in peril in exotic places and times.
YOUNG THOMAS COOK - slaved for three years in an Ottoman galley before leading a slave uprising and taking over the vessel. He then embarked on nearly ten years of piracy, always staying one step ahead of every Ottoman effort to capture or kill him. He eventually returned to England, a wealthy man, married and founded a travel agency that got its start by specializing in catering to the English upper class tradition of sending their sons and daughters on chaperoned Grand Tours of the ancient wonders of the Mediterranean.
USS Constitution during the bombardment of Tripoli
... and what about this French Anjou'girl called Marie (but in reality named Messaline or Paskell) ?
