City of Jasmine (14 page)

“Blast,” I muttered, but as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I realised there was a thin line of light just ahead. I pushed on, guided by the light, and found a slender opening. I was just about to push my way through it when a hand clamped onto my shoulder.

I screamed and jumped backwards. A bat stirred overhead, and Gabriel put a finger to his lips. “Don’t wake them,” he warned. “I’ve a horror of the bloody things.”

He held a match up, dazzling my eyes, but I could see he looked worse than when he’d set off.

“Goodness, Gabriel, what happened to you? You look as if you’d fallen down a hill.”

His clothes were dirtier than ever and a long bloody scratch marred one cheek, running from just below his eye and down into his beard. He put a hand to it.

“I did,” he said quickly. “Fell right down. Made a bloody awful racket. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it.”

“I couldn’t hear a thing. I was too busy finding this,” I told him in triumph, showing him the exit.

“Well done,” he murmured.

“And what about you? Were you shot at?”

He shook his head, his manner distracted. “Not closely. The light was against the count and he missed his shot.”

“The count! So it was the Thurzós after us?”

“Just the count, as near as I could make out,” he said smoothly. He hesitated then hurried on, his lips very white in the dark mat of his beard. “I hate to be the bearer of news, but I should probably tell you—the count won’t be troubling us again.”

The match went out just then, singeing his fingers. He swore and struck another, and by the time he had, his colour was normal again.

“What do you mean he won’t be troubling us?”

“I’m afraid the fellow is quite dead. He had a fall, bless him. It was a stupid thing, so ridiculous I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but he slipped and landed quite the wrong way.”

“The wrong way?” He put a finger to his neck and I felt my stomach turn to water. “He broke his neck?”

“It’s rocky out there,” Gabriel said lamely. “These things happen in the desert.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry for the countess, but not for us. God only knows what he might have done. And I’m sorry you had to see it,” I said kindly. “I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant.”

His eyes were oddly flat. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Still,” I said briskly, “it’s an ill wind that blows no good for someone. We’ll make the best of it and get away while we can, shall we?”

He blew out the match and followed me through the little opening, cursing when his shoulders stuck fast. It was only with a great deal of effort and a bit of lost skin that he wriggled free, but eventually we both emerged into the waning sunlight. The desert had never looked more beautiful. The fading light washed the rocks in colour—honey and primrose and velvety purple.

I turned to Gabriel. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was upset, you see. And I oughtn’t blame you for what went wrong between us. I daresay I was a fool for ever thinking you were someone you are not.”

“I daresay you were,” he returned. But he smiled as he said it, and for just a moment, it was not painful to be with him.

He turned his face to the north. “Come on, duck. We’ve a lot of walking to do.”

Ten

We walked the whole of that night, plodding on until all I knew was the ache of my own body and the chill wind that wrapped around us. Gabriel found another well, this one a mere trickle, and he forced me to drink the foul water, taking as much himself as he could stand. He unearthed a handful of palm dates from a sad, thin tree and handed them to me, bullying me into eating them even as I gagged on the sourness. He pushed me on, into the sands, telling me the whole time how bloody lucky I was that I hadn’t come in summer. He showed not a jot of sympathy; his entire mood was grim and relentless, pricking my temper to frequent outbursts and leaving me in such a state of annoyance that I charged ahead of him just to get away. I walked some twenty yards ahead, correcting my course when Gabriel shouted epithets about my sense of direction. At last the sun began to rise, the morning shadows stretching long over the cruel beauty of the desert, and the breeze began to die.

I paused, letting the warm sunlight play over my face. Gabriel stood at my side, and after a moment he lifted his nose, sniffing.

“What is it?” I asked sharply.

“You don’t smell that? You always did have a monkey’s sense of smell. It’s horse sweat.”

“You’re making that up,” I began, but no sooner had I started than a group of horsemen topped the small rise ahead of us. They were garbed in black robes and riding smart Arabian horses with elaborate bridles and small heads. “Bedouin!” I breathed.

I moved forward, but Gabriel grabbed my arm. “Not so fast. Bedu come in two varieties and these...”

He didn’t bother to finish the thought. The rifles pointed directly at us told the story clearly enough. We put our hands into the air as they rode at us. They began firing a hundred feet away and circled us, shooting at the ground and grinning and shouting things in Arabic.

“What are they saying?” I asked Gabriel. “I’m afraid my Arabic only goes so far as ordering in restaurants and shops.”

“Allah is good, Allah is great, and we are their prisoners,” he said calmly.

“Well, I suppose it could be worse,” I replied. “At least they might feed us.”

Just then one of the Bedouin detached from the group. He wore one of the native headdresses, a sort of veil down his back with a small bit of it draped to conceal his face from the sand and wind. As he came near, he dropped the veil to reveal a wide smile. And a familiar one. “Daoud!” I said, starting forward. A shot at my feet stopped me in my tracks.

Daoud bowed from the saddle and grinned from me to Gabriel. The blank expression he had worn the entire time I had been at the dig was nowhere in evidence. In its place was a look of sharp intelligence, and I realised the guise of simpleton had served him well. No doubt he had picked up quite a bit of information pretending to be a dullard.

“Greetings.” He peered at Gabriel with narrowed eyes. “I think you have been concealing things.”

“It’s a long story and we’re hungry,” Gabriel said pointedly.

“Of course. You will come with us to be our honoured guests,” Daoud proclaimed.

“That’s very kind of you,” I told him. “But if we’re guests why exactly were you shooting at us?”

“Because you will be our guests whether you wish it or not. So long as you give us what we want, we will take very good care of you and there will be no problem.”

“And what precisely do you want?” Gabriel asked.

Daoud’s smile deepened. “We want the Cross that belongs to us, the spoils of war taken by the great and honoured Salah al-Dln—all of it.”

Gabriel’s expression was pained. “I’m afraid we haven’t got it, old boy.”

Daoud’s smile did not waver. He leaned out of the saddle to come quite close to us.

“Then we have a problem.” He gave a series of instructions in Arabic and before we could object, Gabriel and I were both swiftly bound and helped onto horses to ride pillion—me behind Daoud and Gabriel behind one of his compatriots.

“Was this part of your plan?” I asked Gabriel sweetly.

He swore viciously and I realised he hadn’t even heard me. He was struggling with certain anatomical difficulties for a man presented by riding pillion. I turned my attention to Daoud.

“He was telling the truth, you know. You remember—you were there. The Thurzós stole it from us.”

Daoud waved a hand. “Madame Starke, one does not talk business before the demands of hospitality have been met.” Without warning he kicked his mare sharply in the side and she sprang forward. I grabbed Daoud’s robe and held on for dear life.

* * *

The journey took us well into the day, and it was afternoon by the time we reached their small encampment. A few of Daoud’s men had stayed behind, but our appearance roused them, and with much shouting and waving of guns we were brought into the camp. We were given water to drink and for washing our hands, and at Daoud’s instruction, we were untied and taken into a low black tent and made to sit side by side upon a cheap Turkish rug.

“If he feeds us, I will willingly be his harem girl,” I whispered to Gabriel as my stomach gave a terrific growl.

“My dear child, if he feeds us,
I
will be his harem girl,” Gabriel retorted.

I furrowed my brow. “Do Bedouin have harems? I feel I ought to be prepared just in case.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes heavenward. “Now who’s the ass? The
harim
is a Turkish institution. Only city folk have them.”

“But the Bedu do take more than one wife?”

“As Mohammedans, it is their right, yes. But I hardly think you need worry yourself. The last European woman to find trouble in one of the eastern deserts was Alexine Tinne, a Dutchwoman, and that was fifty years ago.”

“What happened to her?”

“Impaled with a Bedouin spear after having her arm cut off. Or was it a Berber spear? Now that I think of it, I seem to recall she was in one of the African deserts.”

“Good God! But still, if that was fifty years ago and it was the last...it
was
the last?”

“Of course not. People come to grief in the desert all the time. I was trying to distract you.”

“From what?” I demanded.

But the flap of the tent was flung back and Daoud entered with a cohort of his men. Behind came a pair of others carrying platters with flatbreads, a pungent sort of sour goat’s cheese and a hot, greasy rice dish studded with bits of stewed vegetables. Daoud signalled that we were to help ourselves, and remembering the strictures about eating only with the right hand, we dove into the platters.

Daoud joined us in a gesture that I suspected was intended to allay our discomfort. He was a genial host, telling stories and asking interested questions about my travels prior to coming into the Badiyat ash-Sham. He was particularly taken with the notion that I flew an aeroplane, and I expanded on that until we had eaten and drunk as much as we could. At last the platters were taken away and Daoud summoned a tall contraption I recognised from the shops in Damascus. It was a water pipe, a
nargileh,
and it had been prepared for him so that all he need do was apply a glowing coal and take several long puffs. When it was going, he offered it to Gabriel, who took a long appreciative drag, then passed it to me.

I pulled hard at the mouthpiece, filling my mouth with the sweetly fruited smoke and holding it there before I blew it out in a slow, steady stream.

Daoud laughed and said something in Arabic.

“He is impressed. Most women don’t handle a pipe that well.”

I smiled. “I learned to smoke from the soldiers I helped nurse at a convalescent home during the war.”

“The Great War?”

I blinked. “Was there another?”

Daoud bared his teeth in a smile that was almost as winsome as it was sinister. “Madame Starke, out here there is always war.”

So we smoked and Daoud listened as I talked of my travels. He was particularly interested in the Seven Seas Tour. We went outside so I could sketch out for him the seas I planned to cross.

“They’re not the modern seven seas, you understand,” I explained as I roughed in the positions. “I chose the seven seas of antiquity. They’re much nearer together, you see, and much smaller.”

He mused over the wide swathes of water I had drawn between the bits of land. “It is too much water. I do not like it.”

“But your own people know the importance of the sea,” I protested. “They took the port of Aqaba from the Turks with the help of Colonel Lawrence.”

He smiled the smile that was nothing like his idiot’s grin. “But the sea is not ours, Madame Starke. We are masters of the desert,” he said, throwing his arms wide.

I turned to look from horizon to horizon, and endless blackness outside the small circle of warm lamplight. It was pierced here and there by the brightness of stars that barely pricked the inky nothingness. “But the desert is a sea,” I told him. “It is vast and relentless and it can take a man’s life with ease. Only the clever and the brave survive.”

No flattery seemed too thick for Daoud. He preened every time I larded a little into the conversation, and by the time we returned to the tent, we were chattering away like old mates. Gabriel sat quietly, his expression alternately bland or sour depending on the topic. Daoud and I ignored him and continued to talk as another
nargileh
was filled and bowls of dates were carried in.

We nibbled and smoked and the talk turned back to my experiences as a pilot.

“I have seen aeroplanes, of course,” Daoud offered. “They flew over the Badiyat ash-Sham rather more often than one would like.” His expression was pained, and I thought of how terrifying it must have been for people whose lives had carried on largely unaltered through the centuries to have come face-to-face with the horrors of mechanised warfare.

I said as much, and he nodded. He talked then of his village, the settlement far to the south where the women and children lived while the men were out raiding. The village moved, of course, herding their flocks between grazing lands, but the faces and the quarrels and the friendships were unchanged. He told me of a brother lost to the Turks and another lost to an overzealous bit of British artillery.

“But worse than this, Madame Starke, is the war that rages among the Bedu. We cannot agree on what should become of us.”

I nodded. “You know, the nomadic peoples in the United States were much the same as yourselves. They followed herds of animals called buffalo—like enormous cows, really—across great grassy plains and fought among themselves. They couldn’t unite to fight their common enemy, either.”

“And who was their enemy?”

“Well, the white settlers who kept moving westwards. They wanted more land and the native peoples were pushed and squeezed. And then the white people hunted all the buffalo until there were none left to feed the natives.”

“And what became of these natives who were like the Bedu?”

I did not flinch from his clear gaze. “They died. Or were pushed onto foul little bits of land that are no good for farming or grazing. Everything they knew was destroyed.”

He pounded the earth with his fist. “This! This is what I fear if the Bedu do not come together in agreement. The English and the French will break us into pieces because they want the cities or they want the oil fields of Mesopotamia. But what of the people?”

“And what are you doing about it?” I demanded coolly.

He gave me a blank look. “I?”

“Yes, you’re busy trotting around the desert abducting people and planning to steal priceless artefacts. That
is
why you went to the dig in the first place, isn’t it? You thought if you pretended to be a halfwit and kept your ears and eyes open you’d find something of tremendous value and make off with it. One trinket from a good archaeological find is worth years of desert raiding. It could keep your people comfortably, I quite understand,” I said, holding up a hand as he opened his mouth to protest. “But what good does that do after this year? You cannot repeat the trick. Your description would be circulated among the digs. You’d never be hired again. And then what? You’ve fed your people for another season but no further. And by then the French mandate may have been formalised. They may have established outposts in the desert, rounding up the stragglers and rebels, putting Bedouins to the sword and protecting their own interests. And what will you have done to stop it? Nothing. In fact, you will have given them a perfect excuse with your lawlessness to come out here and interfere. Is that what you want, Daoud? To bring the ire of the French authorities to bear upon your people?”

His mouth hung slack and he darted a look at Gabriel, who was sitting quite still in the shadows. Gabriel said nothing and his expression was carefully neutral.

“Let us go,” I went on. “Set us free, Daoud. We have no quarrel with the Bedu. We want only prosperity and peace for the great warriors of the desert.” I paused to see if I had laid it on too thickly, but Daoud was more susceptible than I thought. “You are the sons of lions,” I said, my voice ringing with conviction. “You are the children of the wind, masters and first-born sons of the Badiyat ash-Sham. You are the true nobility and the greatest part of nobility is mercy. I cast myself upon your goodness, o’ son of the lion, and I ask for your gracious mercy and compassion as a child of Allah, the merciful and compassionate.”

I bowed my head and waited for his gesture of mercy. Instead, there was a hoarse, grating laugh, and Daoud doubled over in mirth. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and when he wiped them away, he said, “Oh, Madame Starke, that was most impressive. And we Arabs are the most sentimental folk in the world. But I am afraid you’re not dealing with an Arab.”

I blinked at him as Gabriel muttered an oath under his breath. “Not an Arab?”

Daoud gave me a thin smile. “Not a full-blooded one at any rate. My father was Bedu, but my mother was French and brought me up to know the ways of her people, as well. So, while I might be a— What did you call it? A ‘son of the lion’? I am gifted with a great deal of very sound Gallic common sense. Mine is a Cartesian brain, Madame.”

I sat back on my heels. “Drat.”