City of Jasmine (12 page)

I shivered a little as I held the torch high for Gabriel.

He took the knife out of his teeth long enough to bark at me, “Don’t shine that bloody thing in my eyes, woman,” then put it back in and began to clamber down into the well. He wedged his fingers and toes into the cracks between the bricks, the mortar long since worn away. It was dangerous, bloody work, and more than once he slipped when a brick crumbled under him and he had to catch himself one-handed. He grumbled and complained all the while, sending up a steady stream of irritation muffled by the knife in his mouth, but all directed at me, I had no doubt.

At last, when he was halfway down the well, he stopped. Hanging by one arm, his legs braced far apart by thigh muscles that had gone rigid with the effort, he plunged the knife into the remaining mortar and began to scrape. In a few minutes it was over. He was climbing back up with a bundle hanging over his back. He reached the top in a lather of sweat and bloody hands and feet and took the goatskin I handed him. He tipped his head back and swallowed for whole minutes, taking in the last of his water. When he’d finished, he used his knife to slice open the empty goatskin then put it aside. He took the bundle off his back carefully, reverently even, and unwrapped all but the last layer of cloth. It had been tied into lengths of soft leather, now covered in mould and dirt, but he left these behind, keeping only a single wrapping of decaying velvet as he pushed it into the goatskin that had held his water. He fished in his pockets for the little medical kit he’d retrieved from Mother Mary, and by the light of the torch stitched it closed with a large needle and a length of catgut. When he’d finished, it looked like any other goatskin carried by a desert traveller.

“I can’t believe you didn’t let me see it,” I told him as he packed up his medical supplies. It was typical of him that he attended to the Cross with such care and entirely neglected his own scrapes and bruises.

“You’ll have the rest of your life to stare at it.” He pulled his shirt and boots back on and hefted the goatskin with the cross. “Now, we’re going to find someplace to rest, and hopefully get clean because I am forty days beyond filthy and I can’t bear the stench of myself, and then we’re getting you back to Damascus,
inshallah.
”

Suddenly, the shadows at the edge of the oasis shifted again, materialising into a group of people. They flicked on their torches, shining them directly into our eyes.

“Mr. and Mrs. Starke, you will please oblige us by turning over what you have just retrieved from that well,” said a cultured voice.

Gabriel sighed loudly. “You made good time, Thurzó. Better than I would have expected.”

Squinting, I swung my own torch around and was just able to make out the Thurzós and a small band of native fellows draped in the usual striped robes and headdresses. Countess Thurzó looked a trifle less tidy than usual and her brother’s hair was wildly askew, but it was the pistol in his hand that caught my attention.

He smiled at Gabriel. “We were lucky enough to find a cordial group of desert gentlemen willing to rent us their horses,” he said, and I could just hear the jingle of harnesses from some distance off. They’d been lucky. We had been walking upwind of them, which had kept the sound and smell of the horses at bay.

He gestured to the pouch with his pistol. “I must repeat my request, Mr. Starke. I will have the Cross, please.”

“The Cross!” I whipped my head around to Gabriel. “I thought you hadn’t told anyone.”

“I hadn’t,” he said with an unpleasant smile. “But I would lay a fiver I know who did.”

At that moment one of the native fellows moved into the light a little and I saw it was Daoud, Miss Green’s simple manservant.

I looked at Gabriel and he shrugged. “I suspected I was followed one day, but I never caught sight of who it was.” He flicked a cold glance at Daoud. “I gather you followed me and decided to see what was in the well after I left?”

Daoud merely gave a blank grin and shrugged, but Countess Thurzó stepped forward. “He is not so stupid as you think. He saw a good business opportunity when it presented itself.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Why the devil didn’t he just take it then and save us all a great deal of bother?”

She shrugged. “It takes time to arrange for a buyer for such an object, as you yourself no doubt discovered.”

He gave another bored sigh. “All right, then. You’ve bested us. Nothing to do but take our medicine and swallow it.” He hefted the goatskin bag carefully and tossed it with a light underhanded throw to Count Thurzó. The fellow caught it neatly and felt the shape of the Cross through the bag. He gave a nod to his sister and she turned back to us, peering at Gabriel with her torch trained closely on his face as she scrutinised the differences in his face without his lenses and various pads and mouthpieces.

“Your disguise was most effective, Mr. Starke. It was only when I searched Mrs. Starke’s things and yours that I began to suspect who you really were. It seems obvious now that you concealed your identity all the while in order to keep this find for yourself.”

Gabriel shrugged indifferently. “A fellow has to earn a living, you know. And digging in these bloody rocks gets old after a few decades. Thought I’d make a few bob when I found that, but you’ve found me out. Nothing for it but to take my punishment and let you haul us back to Damascus to the authorities.”

Countess Thurzó started to speak but her brother stepped forward and murmured something in Hungarian. They quarrelled briefly, and Countess Thurzó gestured emphatically. But whatever the trouble, her brother clearly carried the day. The countess turned on her heel without another word and strode into the darkness in the direction of their horses.

Count Thurzó sighed and turned to us. Gabriel’s expression did not falter. He was playing the hail-fellow-well-met, but the count was having none of it. “It is very nice that you are gracious in defeat, Mr. Starke, but that does not alter the fact that you cannot be allowed to live.”

My heart lurched against my ribs and I heard an odd ringing in my ears from far away. Gabriel’s perfect imitation of the outraged, overly civilised Englishman never slipped.

“I say, that’s unsporting. Just unsporting is what I call it. And to think we didn’t bother to shoot you when we could have—” He broke off with a sudden startled glance towards me, his expression panicked, but Count Thurzó seized upon what he had almost said and smiled. He came to me and patted my pockets, giving a little sound of satisfaction when he emerged with my tiny pistol.

Gabriel spoke up, his voice rising almost hysterically. “You can’t force her to use that on me. You
mustn’t.
” Count Thurzó looked at Gabriel’s pleading face, then to me, his eyes strangely bright as he held out the pistol. His expression was apologetic but his gaze was implacable.

I stared at the pistol glittering on his palm. “I don’t—”

“Take it, madame. And shoot him. Or I will.” His voice shook with excitement, and I realised then he was new to violence. If he and his sister had been hardened criminals they would have plotted this out in advance, but they hadn’t—the argument bore testimony to that. And now that Gabriel had blurted out his idiotic fear that they would make me shoot him, the count had seized upon this as an extremely elegant solution to the problem of what to do with him. If they shot Gabriel, they might be held for murder. But if I did it, their hands were clean. If the authorities ever became involved, it would be their word against mine, and they could always devise a plausible motive for me to have shot Gabriel. They could claim he had abducted and insulted me, that we had been conspirators to take the Cross and had quarrelled, that I had simply gone mad. The possibilities were legion.

The count’s eyes were searching as he looked at me. I glanced at Gabriel and he said nothing. His only gesture was an almost imperceptible flicker of one eyelid. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I would have missed it altogether. I looked up to see the count was looking grimly determined and behind him his henchmen stood, immovable as the hills themselves, while Daoud smiled his meaningless smile.

I reached out and took the pistol.

“You are a resourceful man, Count Thurzó,” I told him.

“One learns survival of necessity when one has lost a war,” he reminded me as he relieved me of my torch. “Now, please get on with it.” He stepped back sharply and kept his pistol raised, protecting himself in case I should change my mind.

“I have a fully loaded weapon and I am an excellent shot,” he told me. “You might wound me, if you are very lucky, but you will not kill me, and I promise you my revenge would not be pleasant.”

I shuddered and turned back to Gabriel. I lifted the pistol and looked into his eyes. He dropped his eyes, and I was grateful. It would be easier without him staring at me. I lowered my gaze to the pocket of his shirt, a small square of khaki directly over his heart. I stared at it until everything else swam out of focus and there was nothing but that patch of fabric and nothing else in the world.

And then I pulled the trigger.

Nine

Gabriel collapsed facedown onto the ground. He gave a single shudder and lay still, so perfectly, impossibly still that the count’s relief was palpable. “Congratulations, Mrs. Starke,” he said. “You have the nerve of a Hungarian. It takes real courage to shoot a man when you can see his face.”

“Go to hell,” I told him.

He clucked his tongue at me. “That is not nice. Now, I would offer to bring you with us, but I see no need to burden myself with witnesses. You can make your way out of the desert as best as you can. Without water and horses, I think you will not get far. In fact, I would put your chances at no better than one in a thousand. But you might surprise me. You already have.”

He started to go then turned back. “I leave you your torch and the pistol in case you find it necessary to take matters into your own hands when the thirst gets to be too much to bear. My friends are heavily armed, so I would not suggest you try to delay us on our departure. Goodbye, Mrs. Starke.”

He turned on his heel and left with his companions.

I waited until I heard the jingle of their horses’ harnesses fade into the distance before I turned to where Gabriel lay in the dirt. I knelt beside him and rolled him over, not an easy task as he was entirely dead weight. His eyes were rolled back into his head, and for the second time in a week I pulled back my arm and slapped him hard.

He came to, coughing as if he would bring up a lung, and when he could speak, he pointed a shaking finger at me and called me a vile name.

“Yes, well I just bloody well saved your life, so I think you might be more inclined to thank me than insult me.”

He wheezed and coughed for several minutes more while I hunted through his pockets. In the past he had always carried a flask of whisky and I was relieved to see old habits died hard with him. I waved it under his nose and he sat up, cursing, to take a long pull. When he finished, he looked marginally better.

He reached into his pocket, the very pocket where I had shot him, and pulled out the small tobacco tin. Embedded in the lid was the flattened slug from the pistol.

“Well, at least you understood the signal I gave you when I looked down at my shirt. Thank Christ you don’t own a proper gun or I would have been dead for sure.”

“You silly ass. You took a terrible chance letting me do that,” I told him. My hands were shaking as I took the flask from him and drank deeply.

He held up a hand, his tone gentle. “Don’t scold, Evie. It was our best hope.” He got to his feet, wincing a little.

“Does it hurt?” I asked him.

“Like hellfire and I’m going to have a bruise akin to a mule kick.”

“Then you ought to rest,” I told him, pushing him back.

He swayed but kept his feet. “We have to get out of here. I don’t trust them not to come back.”

I rolled my eyes, but there was no arguing with him in that mood. I picked up the goatskins of water and the packets of food and started off in the direction the Thurzós had taken.

Gabriel’s sharp voice stopped me. “You can’t go that way.”

“Why ever not? It’s the way to Damascus, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone exaggeratedly patient. “And that’s where the Thurzós are most likely headed. I’d rather not be headed the same direction, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Don’t you want to get the Cross back?”

“Evie, what I want now is a hot meal and a hotter bath. The Cross is gone, and that’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“Nothing we can do about it?” My voice rose, incredulous. “We can go after it. There are only half a dozen of them and from what I saw, the Thurzós don’t much care to get their hands dirty.”

His jaw went slack as he listened. “You’re mad, do you know that? I thought people who flew aeroplanes understood about calculated risks.”

I flapped a hand. “If we only took calculated risks no one would ever have had the nerve to get into one of the damned things in the first place. When you took that Cross from its hiding place, you took responsibility for it. And now that it’s fallen into nefarious hands, it’s your obligation to retrieve it. What’s the matter, Gabriel?” I taunted. “Lost your nerve?”

He stepped close to me, so close I could see the dirt ground into his face, the brilliance of the blue irises in whites that were heavily shot with red. He was exhausted and battered and I had just shot him. It occurred to me I might have been a little more sympathetic, but I refused to back down. I stood toe-to-toe with him, lifting my chin and giving him a long, cool stare.

After a moment, he eased away, giving a wheezy laugh. “Oh, you nearly had me. Not a bad strategy to bait me into doing what you want. A few years ago, I’d have fallen for that. But not anymore. I don’t give a sweet bloody damn about your approval, Evie. You can think I’m a coward or that I’ve lost my nerve—embroider it on a cushion to sleep with at night. But I’m not going after the Cross. I am getting you safely out of here and washing my hands of the whole affair. And you can argue all you like, but you’re doing things my way or, so help me God, I will truss you like a turkey and carry you over my shoulder all the way to Palmyra.”

I blinked. “Palmyra?”

The very mention of the broken-pillared ruin of Queen Zenobia’s desert city was enough to set the pulses racing. Nestled in the heart of the desert, the tumbled stones of the once-fabled city lay amid the sands, sad relics of what had once been the most vibrant and elegant city between Mesopotamia and the sea. It had controlled the silk route from India from its colonnaded streets, and over it all stood the great temple of Ba’al, where the stars were charted and now only the whispers of the
jinn
broke the silence of the sands.

“Stop it,” Gabriel ordered.

“Stop what?”

“Romanticising the place. It’s a load of bloody great rocks in the middle of the desert. The only reason I’m heading there is because it’s precisely the opposite direction from Damascus.”

I rolled my eyes. “And I suppose archaeology is all about broken pots and desiccated mummies for you? I’ve seen you light up like a little boy at Christmas when you see a particularly nice temple, Gabriel. There are a dozen other places that would serve just as well. You’re choosing Palmyra because you’re as smitten with it as you are with Saladin and Petra and the Dome of the Rock and everything else in this part of the world,” I finished, spreading my arms to encompass the barren landscape before us.

“Don’t take this amiss, duck, but I’m hungry and thirsty and you just shot me. Quarrelling seems a bit of a waste of effort. Now, I’m going that way,” he said, nodding towards the north and east. “You’re welcome to join me. If not, have a nice life and mind the scorpions.”

He strode off with a jaunty stride, and I muttered one of his favourite swear words under my breath as I followed.

When I reached his side, he paused and gave me a penetrating look. “How much did you enjoy pulling that trigger at me?”

I thought a moment. “Less than I expected but more than I should have.”

He nodded. “That sounds about right.”

Shortly after we left the oasis, Gabriel turned and made for a line of low hills perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. We had gone half the way when he whirled around. Behind us, a lone figure sat on horseback on a ridge, silhouetted by starlight. Horse and rider were motionless, but the rider seemed to be watching us. A low cloud obscured the figure a little, and it was impossible to see more.

“Gabriel?”

“I don’t know who it is, but I don’t like it. A friendly Bedouin would have made his presence known. He wouldn’t just sit there watching. Keep making for the hills,” he said, giving my bottom a shove. I didn’t even bother to slap him for it. I doubled my pace, and we pressed on. Gabriel turned every hundred steps or so to look behind, squinting into the shadows thrown by the starlight. Finally, when we had almost gained the hills, the night breeze gusted a little, blowing the cloud from the ridge. As the cloud lifted, the lopsided moon rose, silvering the desert landscape and illuminating the figure on horseback.

I sucked in my breath and Gabriel reached for my pistol. He fired once into the air. The horse was well-trained. It did not move, but the figure on its back did. It raised a hand in a gesture of goodwill and bowed from the waist. We hurried forward into the hills, but still he sat, sinister and silent. And as we scrambled over rocks and thornbushes, I wondered how on earth Herr Doktor Schickfuss had found us.

After twisting our way through the hills for what seemed like hours, Gabriel eventually settled on a quiet little cave tucked so far into the earth even a fox would have had trouble finding it. He shoved me far into its depths, and we collapsed onto the dirt floor.

“How did he find us?”

“Bugger me if I know,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “But at least he knows we’re armed and he won’t dare these canyons on horseback in the dark. We’ll be safe until morning.”

“Why don’t you have your own gun? It seems that someone in your business ought to carry some sort of protection.”

“A gun is simply an invitation for another fellow to shoot you,” he said sleepily. “Besides, you don’t know what my business is. Who says it’s dangerous?”

“Gabriel—” I began.

He held up a hand that was covered in dirt and blood and deep scratches. “I can’t, Evie. Just let me rest now. You’re welcome to abuse me later.”

He held up the end of his belt with a cynical smile and I grasped it, too tired to buckle it properly.

I was too restless to sleep, and I kept reliving the moment when I had pulled the trigger. It might so easily have gone wrong. I might have missed or the tin box might not have been strong enough to stop the bullet. I could so easily have killed him but that didn’t seem to trouble him at all, and I began to worry if he had something of a death wish.

“Gabriel?”

He was slow to answer, but I knew he had not been asleep. “Hmm?”

“Do you want to die?”

“Perhaps,” he said with a mocking light in his eyes. “After all, ‘to die would be an awfully big adventure.’”

“Stop quoting
Peter Pan
and answer the question,” I told him irritably.

He gave a low laugh. “I won’t. It’s absurd.”

“It isn’t, not really. You did let me shoot you,” I reminded him.

“To avoid being shot by András Thurzó,” he returned. “I saw his gun and yours and chose the better odds. Nothing more.”

“And you talked in Damascus about making amends. Atonement, I think you said. Those are words men use when they’re thinking they won’t be around much longer.”

“Planning my next funeral, love?” His tone was amused. “Might be easier for you this time with an actual body to bury.”

I turned away from him, coldly furious. “How very like you to make a joke about one of the most wretched days of my entire life.”

He said nothing, and the silence fell heavily between us.

“I shouldn’t have said it was like you to make a joke,” I told him. “I’ve come to understand that I don’t know what’s like you and what isn’t. I thought I did once—when I married you. At least before you changed. Or perhaps you didn’t change. Perhaps that cold stranger I found myself married to in China was the real Gabriel Starke all along.”

“Perhaps the façade is what you married,” he said quietly.

“I think it must have been. But he was a hell of a façade. He was everything a girl dreams of, but I daresay you know that if you created him. You didn’t miss a trick, did you? You thought of every detail—the beautiful clothes and the elegant manners, the fast car and the penchant for poetry.”

“Ah, yes,” he said in the same soft tone. “Which one did I use on you that first evening we met? Now I remember. Donne, wasn’t it? ‘License my roving hands, and let them go...before, behind, between, above, below.’ I must say, I never expected you to take me so literally. Your enthusiasm was most gratifying.”

Something in my face stopped him. He didn’t say another word on the subject but swore viciously under his breath as I turned away from him and curled up, miserable as I hadn’t been for a very long time. I slept, and when I slept, I dreamed he had left with the Cross and I was left alone with a grinning pile of bones in the corner of the cave. The bones rose up and came together to form Herr Doktor Schickfuss and he smiled as he came near me, holding out the long bones of his fingers to touch me.

“Evie, for God’s sake, wake up.” Gabriel shoved me hard and I woke to find him looming over me, buckling his belt back into place.

I scrambled to my feet. “Bad dream,” I told him, a trifle unnecessarily. “What do you think Herr Doktor is after? Could he know about the Cross?”

He shrugged. “Hell if I know. There’s no telling how many people Daoud took into his confidence. But we must try to slip out of here without him seeing us. I know a track out of these hills that’s as obscure as you can get, and with any luck we’ll run across some friendly Bedu who can help get us to Palmyra.”

“With any luck? Gabriel, has that been your plan all along? I thought you were some sort of criminal mastermind and that leaving the car in the desert was part of some grand strategy, but it appears you’ve been making it all up as you go along.”

He rolled his eyes heavenward and dropped his hands. “There isn’t a manual for this sort of thing, you know. You assess the situation and follow your gut and do your best. And sometimes luck plays a bloody great hand in it all. So, yes, I am very much making it up as I go along, and right now, we are going to eat something and get the hell out of these hills in case Herr Doktor or the Thurzós are lying in wait outside preparing to put a bullet in my brain.”

He snapped his mouth shut, but not before I realised what he had said. “The Thurzós? Why should they come back? They have what they want.” His gaze drifted, so I leaned into his line of vision. “Gabriel? They have what they want, don’t they?”

“Not entirely.”

I felt a chill whisper in my blood. “What did you do?”

He hesitated then leaned over to the dirt floor of the cave, sketching quickly with a finger. “This is the basic structure of the Cross after it was reset by the monks. It’s gold, set with some precious stones—cabochon, of course. It was fashioned before jewellers learned to cut proper facets.”