No Brighter Dream: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 3 (6 page)

“Ali, perhaps you would prefer to tell me the story.” Andre raised one eyebrow, which made Ali burst into laughter. It always made her laugh when he did that.

“No, no—you may tell it. It is only that sometimes you forget to talk about the magnificence of the women, who had to see the suffering of their poor children. At least the men were able to die in glory on the battlefield.”

Joseph-Jean chuckled as he folded his letter and put it aside, then leaned back in his chair to devote his full attention to the story. “It
is
an important point, Andre.”

“Of course it is,” Ali said. “Men always want to die in glory. Go on, Handray.”

“Yes, well, I think I had better skip over the years of distant Persian rule, and Alexander’s conquest, and more Persian rule, since not much blood was spilled and you don’t seem to care about the history,” he said. “I’d hate to bore you.”

“Thank you—but you may leave in the part about the League of Twenty-three Cities and all those nice rich people.” Ali fiddled with her sash. She really liked this part.

“I wouldn’t dare miss it for fear of my life,” Andre said, puffing on his cheroot. “Let’s see. Lycia grew prosperous, having formed a democracy of its own, despite all the warring going on around them. People grew rich—and yes, Ali,” he said, forestalling her, “I’m sure they had jewels and servants and precious oils and handed them out all over the place. We do know that they were very generous with their own people.”

“Well, of course they were,” Ali retorted. “They were kind and brave and perfectly glorious in every way.” She leaned toward him. “You may do all this studying and recording, but you forget that these were real people who lived good lives right here on this very soil. It was not all crumbled ruins then, you know.”

Andre stared at her, then at Joseph-Jean, and they both burst into laughter.

“Well, it was not,” she said uncertainly, wondering why they found that so amusing.

“No,” Andre said, recovering his composure. “It wasn’t. That’s the point, little one, that’s the point. Why do you think we’re doing all this work, if not trying to make that period come alive?”

Ali, now annoyed, folded her arms across her chest. “And that is
my
point. Copying old inscriptions and making drawings and maps does not make something come alive. You talk about Xanthos as if you were giving a history lesson.”

“And how else am I supposed to talk about it?” Andre asked curiously. “I can’t change the facts to suit you.”

“If I were you, I would tell a story, a good one, with people and families, speaking of the tragedies that happened to them, things everyone can understand.” She looked up at the ruins for a moment. Dusk was drawing down and the silhouette of the old buildings and tombs stood dark against the deepening blue of the sky.

She tried to imagine how it would have been almost two thousand years before, a girl watching the night approach, the sounds of the city about her, wondering what she might have been doing—how she might have felt if she knew that war was encroaching on her city, for that was the next, most sorrowful part of the story.

“Ali?” Joseph-Jean asked. “What has made you suddenly so quiet?”

Ali turned to him. “If someone were to come along in another two thousand years, Jojan, and wonder about what my people were like, I would not want him to think of emptiness, of a mass of people without faces, the way we think of them.”

She inclined her head toward the ruins. “I do not mean the big names, the important ones that you and Handray speak of, but people like me, like Umar, or Muzaffer and his wife,” she said, looking back at Joseph-Jean. “I would want these people to know our names, to know about the details of our lives, in a way that would help them to understand what we were like.”

“But we can’t know,” Joseph-Jean said. “We can only imagine.”

“Exactly,” Ali said triumphantly. “And if I were to imagine what it was like here in Xanthos all that time ago, I would make up a family.”

“Oh?” Andre said, leaning his forearms on his thighs and looking down at her. “And what sort of family would you make up, Ali?”

She rested her cheek on her fist, thinking hard. “I would start with a family who had lived a simple life here.”

“What, no riches?” Andre asked with a smile.

“Riches are not important to people like myself,” Ali replied seriously. “They are only important to great lords like you, where they are necessary to maintain your standing. For others, riches are merely about greed. They do more harm than good, I think.” She looked down at the ground for a moment, thinking of Hadgi. “The promise of riches,” she added, “can be very bad. It can make people behave in a dishonorable fashion.”

“Ali—I have rarely seen you so solemn,” Joseph-Jean said. “Does something trouble you?”

“No,” she said quickly, realizing that she’d nearly said too much. If Handray got even the slightest whiff that things were not as she’d told him, he would interrogate her until he’d dug out the entire truth.

“Ali?” Andre asked, his eyes sharp on her face. “What is it?”

“I was only thinking about that horrible man Brutus who wanted riches so much that he was happy to steal them from Xanthos, to make the people his slaves. And look what happened—they all died as a result of his greed.”

“Yes, but that was their choice,” Andre pointed out. “I don’t think Brutus had any idea that they’d commit another mass suicide. It’s not what people generally do when they’re invaded. And they do say that Brutus wept when he heard their cries—so he wasn’t entirely unfeeling.”

“Well, when an entire city is burning and everyone is burning with it, I do not know what else he would expect to hear,” Ali replied tightly. “All those poor dear children—and their mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles—”

“Don’t forget the grandparents,” Joseph-Jean supplied helpfully.

“And of course their grandparents, too. All suffering an agonizing death because someone else wanted money for his war,” Ali said, tears starting to her eyes at the appalling image. “Now do you see what greed will do?”

“Yes, Ali, but don’t forget that Brutus felt so terrible that he paid his soldiers a reward for every Xanthian they found alive. So a hundred and fifty of them did survive.” Andre held out a handkerchief, but Ali pushed his hand away, suddenly filled with rage that Andre could be so callous, as if it didn’t matter. He had no feelings at all, none.

“I don’t need a handkerchief, and how could you defend that terrible man?” she asked furiously, jumping up and glaring at him. “Just because he was a great lord like you does not make what he did right.”

“That’s not what I—” Andre started to say.

“Bah!” Ali said in disgust. “All you care about is your stupid history. You and those clever effendis you are always talking about—Fellows, Beaufort, your great hero Lacey, you are all the same.”

“Well, I can’t object to being listed in that company,” Andre said lightly. “So if you’re trying to insult me you’re doing a very poor job.”

“None of it is real to you,” she said heatedly. “It is all a big game, a puzzle you put together. You do not care about the people, how they must have felt. And this makes you a stupid man even if you are smart in your head.”

“What in God’s name—”

“Oh, never mind!” she said, knowing in another minute she would burst into tears, and she refused to cry in front of him. “You would not understand, anyway. You are right—you have no heart, none at all.” She stormed off.

Andre looked at Joseph-Jean with astonishment. “What was that all about?”

“I have no idea,” Joseph-Jean replied. “But something got to Ali. You’ve told that story countless times now and never had a reaction like that.”

“I know. Oh, well. Whatever it was, Ali will get over it. I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I’m going to begin working on the necropolis and with the heat the way it’s been, I want to make an early start.”

He went to get his bedroll from the tent, for it had been too hot to sleep inside. He settled down but grew progressively more annoyed as he waited for Ali to return.

The night wore on, and he grew angrier by the hour, swearing that if Ali wanted to be eaten by wolves or whatever hungry predator was out there, it was no concern of his. And if Ali didn’t wish to hear the story of the next constellation on the bedtime list, that was no concern of his either.

If there was one thing he could not abide, it was an ungrateful, temperamental child.

Ali barely spoke to Andre over the next three days, she was so annoyed with him. When she did have to speak, it was in short, curt phrases, but he didn’t appear to notice, going about his business in his usual fashion and behaving as if she didn’t exist, which only made her angrier.

He was an unfeeling monster like his friend Brutus, she told herself, stirring the superb soup she’d made for the evening meal with fish freshly caught in the nearby sea.

He was cold and insensitive, with not a drop of emotion in his smallest toe. He was … Ali’s head lifted as a commotion in the distance claimed her attention. Two horses rode hard toward the camp, kicking up a great cloud of dust. The camels and cows that had been peacefully grazing in the pasture scattered in alarm.

She stood, wondering who might be coming in such a fashion as not to respect the grazing rights of the Yourooks.

A man in European dress pulled up and abruptly dismounted. “Lord Banesbury,” he demanded, and then followed it with something Ali couldn’t understand.

She bowed respectfully. “I do not speak your language, effendi. I beg your pardon.”

The second man, who wore white Arab robes, brought a crop down on her shoulders. “Your master, fool,” he said in badly accented Turkish. “Where is he?”

“He is in the ruins,” she said, fighting back the sudden sting of tears. It had been so long since anyone had beaten her that she’d forgotten how much it hurt. “I can summon him if you wish. Would you take refreshment?”

The Arab nodded. “Give it first to the lord. He is a very great Englishman, come from Rhodes on the queen’s urgent business.”

Ali looked at the Englishman. He didn’t look like a great lord to her, certainly nothing like her master, whom one could mistake for nothing else. But she bowed obligingly enough.

“Effendi,” she said, pouring him
ayran,
thinned yogurt with a little salt added. He took it without thanks. Ali poured some for the Arab. “Your names, effendi, that I might tell Banesbury?”

“Tell him Lord Weselley is here. My name is of no matter to you.”

Ali bowed again and took off at lightning speed, racing past the acropolis, the basilica, making directly for the necropolis, where she knew Andre was working that day.

“Handray,” she said, pulling up among the standing tombs and sarcophagi, breathing hard from having run all the way up the hill.

“So, brat. You are speaking to me again,” Andre said, looking up from the inscriptions he was copying. “Now maybe you’d care to tell me what it is that set off your temper?”

“Never mind that,” she said, still panting. “You have visitors—a great Englishman, his name is Lord Weselley. It is urgent, something about your queen.”

He frowned. “Oh, God, not Thomas Weselley, of all insufferable people. I suppose he has that damned Syrian with him too.”

“His companion is an Arab of some sort, yes.”

Andre swore fluently under his breath, and Ali sighed. She was beginning to think she was never going to break him of the habit.

“Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it,” Andre said. “Damn!”

“You do not like him, Handray? I am glad, for I do not like him, either.”

“I loathe him,” Andre replied, abandoning his task. “He, Ali, is precisely the sort of English person I cannot abide. But he’s an historian too, and works with the same people I work with, so I’m forced on occasion to tolerate him.”

“Is he a great lord?” she asked. “His servant says he is, but I do not think so, myself.”

“He is what is known as a baron,” Andre said, packing up his knapsack. “It’s not a particularly prestigious title, but the measure of a man’s worth is not in his title, it’s in his actions.” He shook his head. “If Weselley’s are anything to go by, they put him on the lowest scale there is. He’s one of the most unethical, dishonorable people I’ve ever had the misfortune to know.”

Ali nodded in vigorous agreement, thinking of Weselley’s disrespect for the animals. “Who is the Syrian?” she asked as Andre tossed his knapsack over his shoulder.

“Oh, him. His name is Abraham. He suits his master. And trust me, Ali, there’s no lower form of humanity than a Syrian.” He gave her a wry smile. “He’d sell you his mother if he thought he could make a profit, and stab you in the back if you were stupid enough to turn it.”

Ali rubbed her burning shoulder, thinking Handray might be right about Syrians being the lowest form of humanity, with the possible exception of Hadgi, who also beat viciously and often without reason.

“Go find Jo-Jean, would you?” Andre said. “Tell him what’s happened. He’s going to be equally displeased to hear of our visitors.”

“Will they be staying?” Ali asked unhappily.

“I am sure they will. But not for long, if I have my way. Sadly, I have to be polite for the sake of my work. Weselley’s the sort who takes offense at anything and will use it to make trouble.” He started to leave, then suddenly turned back to her. “And Ali? Stay out of the way as much as you possibly can, all right? I mean it. Stay out of the way.”

Andre cursed his bad luck as he started down the hill. He should have known Weselley would ferret him out on the pretense of research. But more than likely he was up to his old tricks.

The man had cheated his way through Oxford, and he was now cheating his way through his research, stealing right and left from other historians, Andre included.

He had no doubt come to sniff out what new theories Andre had come up with so that he could slip them into a paper before Andre’s Lycian book came out.

And the damned Syrian—God, how he loathed him. Andre had once seen him cut the head off a dog for no reason other than the poor beast had the unfortunate judgment to lift its leg on Abraham’s robe. Just looking at him sickened Andre. But there was nothing to do but put the best possible face on the matter.