Laura Kinsale (12 page)

Arden was angry at himself. He had never considered himself an intolerant man, certainly not a righteous one, but he found that he was intensely discomfited by this new intuition. At the same time he thought himself a simpleton not to have considered it—the boy’s air of delicacy had been plain from the start, and many of the Ottomans viewed such things with complacency, even considered the love between a man and a boy to be on some finer plane than that between man and woman. Arden made a conscious effort to view it in the same spirit, but he felt as if he had smacked face-on into a stone wall—there were many things he could accept, and a number of things he could deeply admire in the Eastern culture, but he found that he could not bear that Selim had come to think of him in that way.

Now that he was attentive to it, he saw that at least one man, a sleek-looking camel broker from Damascus, stared at the boy with something beyond mere curiosity—with a hungry look of recognition. Selim’s anxious fingers clung to Arden’s arm with even more apprehension than usual. Arden scowled at the fellow fiercely to warn him off. The camel buyer smiled and made a brief bow as he turned away.

When the
mejlis
was called, all rose to attend the emir’s daily gathering in the wide street outside. Arden walked with Selim instantly behind him. He did not, could not bear to look at the youth as they found a place in the shade of a wall, settling down cross-legged with the Shammar, but he felt the Bedu and the townspeople observing him and Selim, some with a hard curiosity that he distrusted. He was fully appreciative of the company of his Shammar, for such looks could turn ugly.

The prince arrived, taking his place on a raised platform, a mud bench built into the wall and covered luxuriantly by Baghdad rugs and pillows. Princely enough he was, Abdullah ibn Rashid, dressed in Indian silk of purple and a long shirt of perfect white linen, with a loose black sleeveless
abah
over all. He wore a pair of golden-hilted daggers thrust in his sash. Colorful kuffiyahs draped his narrow, frowning face, one head scarf laid over the other, bound about his forehead with ropes of gold thread. With his beard trimmed to a neat and elegant point, he was the epitome of the desert prince, dark-eyed and lean, his look flitting restlessly over the crowd, always moving and searching even while he listened to the complaints and petitions and kissed the cheeks of tribal sheiks.

First among equals, Prince Rashid. He had won his position by arms, as the lieutenant of a rebellious Saudi who even now languished in Cairo, prisoner of the Egyptian viceroy. The Saudis, those old Wahhabi fanatics, were broken. The Egyptians garrisoned their capital of ar-Riyadh, a small island of soldiers surrounded by the enemy Bedouin, pursuing the ancient policy of encouraging hate and division between the tribes. And Rashid held his
majlis
with an Egyptian officer beside him—but they bound this hawk by fragile jesses.

The sheiks were gathering. If Prince Rashid could unite them, if he could hold them together even for a season, they could turn upon their tyrants and break the Egyptian’s grasp.

One by one, the day’s cases were presented to the emir and summarily decided. Once the Egyptian officer made a protest, and Prince Rashid added a beating to the fine assessed against a man who had spit at an Egyptian soldier.

More often he consulted the
kady,
the man of religious law, for some interpretation or scripture from the Koran.

It was long and rather boring. Arden saw the camel broker who had stared at Selim rise and pass through the crowd, going forward to speak to a man who sat beside the emir—one of the prince’s brothers, Arden thought. The brother leaned over and murmured to Rashid. The emir nodded. His searching gaze swept over the crowd and for an instant seemed to light on Arden.

The prince lifted his hand, beckoning.

Damn and blast,
Arden thought.

“Come, I would ask the news of my beloved Shammar,” Rashid said in a carrying voice. “Come, come, God be praised that you have arrived well and brought your guest.”

Selim was all but hidden behind Arden as he and the Shammar rose, going forward to greet the prince. The boy would have stayed behind, but Arden reached down and hauled him up, pushing him ahead with a bit more force than necessary.

“Ya
sheik!” the Shammar addressed their emir; or even
“Ya
Abdullah!” without courtly ceremony, in the Bedouin way. The prince had dismissed any townspeople with the proud gestures of royalty, but he was gentle with the desert nomads. Well he might be, Arden thought, for they were assembling in force, three thousand spears and camels outside his walls, and he was, in the end, no more than one of them—elected by violence and personal honor, his authority accepted while he was powerful and just, but easily abandoned for sufficient reason. And to the Bedu, any reason was likely to prove sufficient.

Arden was more polite, as a stranger at the emir’s pleasure. He had not requested a private audience; he did not wish to draw attention to himself, but Prince Rashid’s fretful gaze fixed instantly on his face.

“By Allah,” he muttered to one of the Shammar, “I am told he is
Mogreby,
but he has the eyes of Sheytan!”

Arden cast down his devil’s blue eyes. “I am of Andaluz, O Long-of-Life,” he said. “My mother was a princess of that country.”

“Look up at me! I am not afraid.”

Arden lifted his eyes. He allowed a faint smile to touch his lips, a smile that said,
I didn’t think you were.
But he spoke nothing aloud.

Rashid grinned suddenly. “Sit down!” he said, waving toward his right.

It was a mark of honor and preference, one that Arden would just as well have done without. But to efface himself now was impossible. He settled cross-legged on the rugs beside the emir. The prince’s
kady
gave Arden a narrow, excited look. Arden hoped the man was not whipping himself into a religious fervor.

With a flick of his hand, Prince Rashid bid the rest of the Shammar to sit. Selim was doing his best to be invisible, slipping into a position at Arden’s feet.

“And what is the purpose of your journey?” Rashid demanded.

“I must find this son of my father a bride, for I have vowed that I will do it, if I must come to the ends of the earth.”

“You find him a bride,
wellah!”
Rashid repeated, bemused. “This is an honorable task, but why have you come so far?”

“Because the young
sheytan
will have no brides!” Arden exclaimed. “Ask those who were in the coffee-hall if it is not so!”

This raised a laugh and a murmur among the crowd. Selim pressed back against Arden’s knee. He thought he could feel the boy shaking. But he had no choice but to brazen the thing out, whatever Selim might wish.

“Let me see this one,” Prince Rashid said, beckoning. “Stand up, boy.”

Selim was trembling visibly now. He came slowly to his feet, his head lowered.

“Come here,” the emir said. “Closer.”

Selim took a reluctant step.

“Here!” Rashid exclaimed, scowling. Arden took Selim’s elbow and thrust him in front of the prince.

For a long moment, Rashid looked on the boy. His
kady
leaned over and whispered in his ear. Rashid did not take his eyes from Selim, but his hard mouth curved downward.

Suddenly he rose, taking the boy’s chin between his fingers and jerking his face up.

Selim made a faint sob, a sound of such terror that Arden came to his feet. The boy lifted a slender hand, as if reaching out to him—but Arden was not looking at that.

He was staring at Rashid and Selim—at their profiles, one so close to the other.

Like a landscape lit by a bolt of lightning, he saw it.

Rashid: dark, hard, black-bearded, Arab. Male. And Selim: none of those things.

None of those things.

The prince turned his head, looked at Arden with his mouth pulled down in a cruel curve and his black eyes ablaze.

“Is it she?” he hissed.

Not until Rashid said the word did Arden feel as if his mind could encompass it.
 

She.

She!
He wanted to turn his face to the burning blue sky and shout it in frenzy. She!

He had known it. His body had known it, dreamed of women, dreamed of
her,
the soft hand in his sleep, the angel that sang in his burning visions.

She.

His throat would not manage words. He only glared back at Rashid, mute.

“Come!” the prince said, halfway to a snarl. “May it please Allah—you are mine!”

He turned, his robes swirling. But the Egyptian officer stepped in front of him. Rashid stopped, then put out his arm and flung the man aside. He turned to the crowd and lifted his hands.

“The Queen!” he shouted in a huge voice that rolled across the stirring crowd. “The Queen of the Englezys! She has come to me!”

“The Queen!”
It was a murmur, a rushing wind in the mass of desert warriors. “She is come!”

They rose, the Shammar, the Annezy, the ferocious Kahtan and the Sherarat, the sheiks and nomads of a hundred tribes, with their legions camped beyond the walls.

They began to press forward. The
kady
leapt onto the prince’s platform.

“Allah akhbar!
The holy war begins!”

“Jihad!”
roared the crowd in return.
“Allah akhbar!”

The slaves and soldiers near the prince broke into confused fighting. Arden grabbed Selim’s arm, but the emir had him—
her
—in a vise grip, hauling her toward a low door into the castle. Arden held on, staying with her, slamming the Egyptian officer against the wall with an elbow in his throat.

“Jihad!”
the crowd kept howling, a thunder now against the echoing walls.
“Kill,
in the name of the Prophet!” The last thing Arden saw before he ducked into the black passageway was the Egyptian officer go down beneath the curved knives of twenty screaming Bedouin.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Who are you?” Lord Winter demanded through clenched teeth.

Zenia sat down with her back against the wall, her face hidden in her knees.

“Tell me, damn it!” he shouted. His voice echoed back from the walls of the empty room, an unused harem filled with rugs and pillows, lit only by barred windows high above. “Tell me!”

“Lady Hester is my mother,” she whispered.

“Of course,” he muttered. “Of course it would be Lady Hester. The queen of the bloody desert! Queen of a bloody lunatic asylum!”

She could feel him staring at her. She could not look up; she was without even tears. Her hands would not stop shaking.

Suddenly she felt his fingers on her cheeks, forcing her face up as the emir had done. Lord Winter’s blue eyes searched over her features, intense.

“Do you know your father?” he demanded. “Do you know who your father is?”

She moistened her lips. With trembling fingers, she searched beneath her robes, and handed him the miniature.

He didn’t even look at it. “It’s Bruce,” he said, still staring at her face. “It’s Michael Bruce, isn’t it? God forgive me. You’re English.”
 

Zenia nodded.

“What have you made me do?” he asked wildly, thrusting up away from her. He paced the room. “You’re English! You’re an Englishwoman!” He stopped suddenly, looking over his shoulder at her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” she said weakly.

He laughed. “Oh God.” He put his hands over his face and tilted his head back. “God!”

Zenia stared down at her knees. “I’m sorry.” She swallowed. “I didn’t want to come here.”

“You didn’t want—” He gave a fierce laugh. “You’re an Englishwoman! By God, how the devil was I supposed to—” He stopped suddenly. “No!” He turned on her. “No—tell me that it wasn’t to get you to England. Tell me that you aren’t such a goddamned little
fool!”

She felt as if she could not draw breath. “My father!” she cried, unable to put together more of an explanation in the face of his vehement denial of her dream. “I was going to go to my father!”

The expression on his face frightened her. There was a strange glitter in his eyes, a cold fury that made her press herself back against the wall.