Laura Kinsale (16 page)

Too soon, too soon, not yet!

He gripped her hand hard. The numbness came over him now, the unreality he had expected. The moment had arrived. They were coming.

He stood up in the dark, supporting her as she rose beside him. He had expected light. Was it all to be in this blackness?

The door scraped softly. “Englezy!” a voice whispered. “Come, with the woman. There are camels waiting!”

Something like lightning seemed to flash through Arden’s veins. The numbness shattered.

Rashid!
he thought savagely.
By the Prophet and by the ninety-nine names of Allah and by the Hundredth Name, God blacken your face and give you long life and power, you old fox!

“Dhai!”
hissed some voice in the starry dark, and Zenia’s camel rose. It moaned, a blessedly familiar sound, its front heaving upward as she leaned over the frame for balance, then in two jerks the animal’s rear swayed to full height while she inclined far back, as if descending a steep hill, then came the bumping thrust from its knees to its forefeet. Never had she so badly wanted to lean over and hug the long undulating neck of a camel as when this one moved out in the long smooth trotting stride of a thoroughbred racer.

They were already a long way outside the walls of Hayil, having walked and run swiftly through the dark streets, beyond the palm groves and out into the desert to where the camels waited. The guards at the gate had opened the way for them without a sound.
Prince Rashid,
Zenia had thought at first, but the two men with them were no Bedu. They were Egyptians, a black officer and a soldier of the garrison. And although this was clearly escape, there was something of arrest about it: their camels were led by others, urged on hastily by silent Bedu she could not recognize in the dark.

The night air throbbed past her cheeks. She rode like a man, as she always had, with her knee hooked about the crossed frame, but it felt for the first time a strange and sore position. She was vividly aware of her sex—she felt all wrong and yet right. The terror already seemed unreal, as if that could never have happened, that she might have died—but the feel of Lord Winter in her and around her was intensely real, as sharp as the scent of him on her skin.

She was embarrassed by it. The Egyptians might not notice, but she was sure that the Bedu could perceive it in the clear night air. With such a scent on her, she wished that she might hide in a proper camel litter, as the nomad women traveled. She wished that she could veil herself like the town women, but she did not even have a kuffiyah. She wanted to hide, and hold her femaleness to herself, and give the secret of it to no one but him.

“Where are we going?” Lord Winter finally asked in a low voice, barely audible above the shuffling thump of the camel’s feet in the sand.

“You are going to Cairo, Englezy,” the officer answered.

“Cairo!” Lord Winter exclaimed softly.

‘To the
wali.
Mohammed Ali.”

Zenia’s heart clenched. The Egyptian viceroy, the father of Ibrahim Pasha, the most powerful enemy her mother had ever enraged. Lady Hester had set herself against Mohammed Ali years ago, and thwarted him and his armies at every turn she could.

But Lord Winter chuckled.
“Wellah,
God send that he recognizes your true worth!”

“Inshallah,”
came the officer’s voice out of the dark, with good humor. “Khalid ibn Saud is a dog and a fool.”

“Fool enough to kill a woman of the English,” Lord Winter murmured. “There would have been bloody vengeance for that. Beyond what you can imagine.”

The officer grunted. “You are more a fool to come to the desert, Englezy, and bring this woman in disguise. I cannot fathom this madness. But we save your broken-headed carcass, by Allah. My pasha sees to it.”

“Your pasha might have spoken up yesterday, and saved us a wretched night.”

“It is better this way. Even Wahhabi dogs can kill in packs.”

Lord Winter chuckled. “Very true. And the Englezys will thank Mohammed Ali, eh?” he said. “To restore us with our heads on our shoulders. The Lord remember him for good!”

“And may the Englezys see the folly of fighting for the sultan,” the officer added caustically.

“By my beard, you may be sure that I shall point it out to them.”

The camels went jogging swiftly on under the stars. Zenia kept her worries to herself. She would have to find a way to communicate with Lord Winter, tell him that she did not dare trust herself to Mohammed Ali’s whim. Not three summers ago, her mother had fired the Druze revolt with all the ingenuity and cunning she could command. Whenever a Druze sheik had come to Dar Joon, Lady Hester had greeted him with a sneering reminder of their submission to the army of Mohammed Ali’s son without a shot fired.
“What, hadn’t you a single bullet for Ibrahim Pasha?”
had been her constant gibe to the proud mountain tribes. The spark found dry and ready tinder. The revolt had exploded, spreading across the Lebanon, until Lady Hester had smiled to hear that Mohammed Ali had declared that the Englishwoman had caused him more trouble than all the rebellious people of Syria and Palestine.

Zenia could not submit herself to Mohammed Ali. But they were in the desert now, and it was a long journey to Cairo. She would find a way to speak secretly to Lord Winter, and they would escape, and come safely to some port and take ship for England. The two of them, as he had promised.

He spoke quietly once or twice to the Egyptians, but addressed no word to her. She wondered what he thought. She had felt that she’d known, back in the locked room in Hayil, that his mind and hers were as one, but now in the desert she was not sure. After the wild tension, the long hours, the frenzied silence of escape, the camel carried her along, carried her along, carried her along at an endless rocking trot. She clung wearily to the saddle frame.

Slowly the images of the pacing camels, the mountains and the sky, began to take firmer shape. She turned her head when she could see—they were nine, the two Egyptians, armed to the teeth with muskets and pistols and swords, a Bedu each leading Zenia and Lord Winter, a guide and a flanking guard trailing behind with two extra baggage camels. She saw Lord Winter’s revolving rifle slung upon one of them, along with their own familiar packs.

Zenia had no idea of how far they had come. As the light grew, the Egyptian said something softly, and the guide touched his camel. They all moved more swiftly. The leader broke into a lope and the rest followed.

The translucent dawn showed them close under the sharp fantastical cliffs of mountains, a jagged line against the white sand dunes that swept up the sides of the ridges, cloaking the base of the tall rosy walls. Black shadows stood out sharp in the ravines and gorges.

The guide seemed to be making for one of these dark valleys. The camels loped along, skirting a huge dune, galloping in a great sweeping curve up into the rock-strewn gorge.

They halted in the chill shadow of the walls, with the last stars just fading in the slot of sky above. Zenia turned. When she met Lord Winter’s eyes he frowned a little and turned away, swinging down from the standing camel with his foot on the creature’s neck.

One of the Bedu clambered swiftly up the steep rock wall to keep a lookout. Zenia dismounted as Lord Winter and the Bedouins had, without making her camel kneel. She went and stood close to Lord Winter, but still he did not speak to her or look at her.

“We will wait here until dark,” the officer said.

“So close to Hayil?” Lord Winter asked.

“My pasha has so ordered,” the Egyptian said. “He will thwart the Saudis from pursuit. Khalid is a dog.”

Zenia thought of the cold-eyed Egyptian general who had sat at the emir’s right hand, silent and bored as a master with an ill-tempered puppy on his leash.

“You are not to be seen or spoken to by any of the tribes,” the officer added. “If you give me your word to make no such attempt, I will leave you unconstrained.”

“Upon Allah’s life, I swear it,” Lord Winter said immediately.

The black officer looked at Zenia. “And you?”

Standing a little behind and close to Lord Winter’s side, she swore quietly and fervently.

“You are to dress and veil yourself properly as a woman,” the Egyptian said, pulling down a pack. He dragged a black volume of cloth out and tossed it toward her.

Zenia felt herself grow hot and flustered. She bent down and took up the bundle, with all their eyes on her, and slipped behind a rock to put on the tent of dark clothing that covered her head to foot. She struggled to don the robes over her loose shirt, hardly knowing how to arrange the abundance of cloth. As she emerged, the officer said tersely, “Your face.”

Zenia covered her face. And she saw how she altered before them—became almost transparent in her black covering; invisible. A woman. They looked past her and around her and never at her. Even Lord Winter did not lift his eyes to hers.

He seemed like a stranger. Zenia felt a surge of anger at him, an impulse to fling off the veil and force him to turn his face to hers. But she did not. Already knowledge was creeping on her—comprehension that the night before was not today, that they had acted without a future, and only now found there was to be one.

Blue shadows stained the high, pink walls at the entrance to the gorge. The men ate, sitting about, forming a circle that excluded her. Zenia stood beside her camel, watching from within her muffling. When they rose, there was food left for her to eat alone.

Lord Winter sat a moment after the others. She thought he was waiting for her. But as she took a step forward, he suddenly shoved to his feet. He began to run toward her.

Zenia took a step backwards at the expression on his face. There was a pop—the camel beside her groaned and stumbled—and in a moment of paralyzed shock she realized that it had been shot.

Confusion broke around her. Everyone was running toward the milling camels. A shout came as the lookout flung himself down the sand dune that swept across the mouth of the gorge. He fired. Lord Winter’s camel sprang forward and fell among the disorder of animals and men. But Lord Winter was in front of her; looming over her—he seized her about the waist and hurled her upward. The ground and the sky seemed to whirl as she pitched into the arms of one of the Egyptians atop a moving camel. As she fell in between the officer and the saddle frame, the camel bellowed and broke into a gallop for the entrance of the gorge, driven by a savage beating.

The other camels stampeded with them, the Bedouins dragging themselves onto their mounts as the animals charged. Zenia tried to turn; she caught a glimpse of Lord Winter yanking his rifle from the baggage camel as he swung atop it. As he fired at the traitorous lookout she lost sight of him. They burst from the gorge, mounting the dune with sand flying.

In the still dawn sky a pillar of dust revealed the pursuers on their tracks, yet unseen below the high crest of the dune. She heard the officer issue a curt command; the other Egyptian and a Bedu turned their camels away, heading back. The man she rode with did not break out into the open past the dune, but urged his camel along the base of the cliffs, keeping in the cold shadows.

Zenia heard the crack of gunfire, but the Egyptian officer whacked his mount, driving it on at a ground-eating run over the blue-tinged sand. She tried again to turn and look behind, but he shoved her brutally back.

“Keep still, or I’ll strangle you!” he hissed at her ear. “Allah curse you! Curse the Englezys, and all treacherous Bedouin dogs!”