Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  He had his eighteen years now and more. Freeing slaves was not at all uncommon among the Ihaggaren. Lufti’s freedom was long past due.

  “But sire, I have no need of this. I have always been fortunate in your household. With you my status has always been more that of free man than slave. Yaya, the others know it well, and envy me for it. And who would feed the spirits for you and keep the evil eye at bay, when you refuse to wear amulets?”

  “You are welcome to remain with me always. Nothing need change,” Moussa said. “Nothing except that you are a free man, able to own a goat of your own, if that is your wish.”

  Lufti thought about it and the idea grew in his mind. He looked at Chaddy and there was a broad smile on her face.

  To own a goat of their own was a wonderful thing.

  * * *

  One morning Paul took uup a water bag and a lance to use as a staff, and went hiking alone into the mountains. As he reached the top of a path that overlooked the Tuareg camp he saw Moussa next to one of the tents. A woman was with him, and Moussa was holding an infant. His cousin played easily with the child, rocking it in his arms or lifting it into the air and whirling gently around. Paul felt a curious fullness in his chest as he watched. He heard their laughter and it brought a smile to his heart. The sight filled him with longing.

  After a while he continued up the path, wandering aimlessly for the entire day. It felt good to walk, to stretch his muscles and breathe the fresh air. It was the first time in months he’d paid attention to his surroundings, and they were lovely. He saw the cone of a volcano, and a gazelle. A butterfly landed on his hand. It always surprised him to see such fragile life in the deep desert. He marveled at the delicate opalescent wings that changed color as they fluttered in the soft light. When he waved gently to let it fly away it didn’t want to leave. It was a little thing, but it made him smile.

  The next morning as he was leaving camp to repeat the hike, Moussa appeared at his side. “Do you mind if I come along?”

  Paul stared awkwardly at the ground. “No. Not if you want.”

  Moussa didn’t try to talk, preferring to let Paul pick his own time. Paul, to his surprise, found that the silence was not uncomfortable. Their strides were uncannily alike, and when one of them wanted to turn or to stop or to climb or to descend they both seemed to do it at the same time, each somehow sensing the other’s intent. At midmorning they sat in the shade of a tamarisk tree and Moussa produced goat’s milk and cheese. While they ate they watched some mountain sheep moving as if by magic up an impossible rock wall.

  In the afternoon Moussa’s slingshot materialized and he shot a hare that Paul hadn’t even seen, in a motion so quick it was a blur. Paul smiled and gave a low whistle. Moussa skinned it quickly and started a fire. Paul stuck the hare on the end of his lance and began roasting it. He sat back by the fire and lost himself watching the sky.

  Suddenly he felt a little nudge. “That’s getting a bit crisp,” Moussa said.

  Paul looked at the smoking ruin and laughed at himself. “I’m not much at cooking, I guess.” He cut the blackest part off for himself and gave the rest to Moussa.

  As the day passed Paul felt himself letting some of the grimness and the shame slip away, losing himself in the easy company of his cousin, who pointed out landmarks and made little jokes and seemed completely at ease. Paul realized that Moussa hadn’t really changed very much. And there was something else. For months Paul had felt like an old man inside. With Moussa he felt like a boy again.

  In the afternoon they stopped at a guelta. “The first time I came here there was a little crocodile living in this pool,” Moussa said. “I don’t know how it got here, or what happened to it. I haven’t seen it since.”

  Paul looked at him skeptically. He knelt by the water and put his hand in. “Jesus,” he whispered. “It’s cold.”

  Moussa harrumphed. “There’s a guelta where I swim near Abalessa. When I jump in my head breaks the ice. That’s cold.” He began removing his clothes, dropping his robe, then his pants, and finally, in long stretches, his blue veil, until he stood naked before his cousin. Paul saw the old scar, still prominent, and noticed something that surprised him. “Your face looks blue,” he said.

  “It’s the dye in the cloth,” Moussa nodded. “It rubs off. It’s why they call us the blue men, idiot. Are you coming?” And he climbed up onto a rock and dove in, making barely a splash. Paul stripped quickly and followed him in, the water slamming his system like an ice hammer.

  He came to the surface and sputtered. “Ten minutes in here and I’ll bet that’s not the only part of you that’s blue.” Moussa laughed and they swam and splashed and dove off an even higher rock, turning flips in the air before they hit the water.

  After they were both shivering to the core they lay down next to each other on the rocks to let the sun warm their backs. Paul nestled his face in the crook of his arm. He closed his eyes and felt the healing warmth on his skin, and he willed the day never to end.

  “I’m sorry, Moussa,” he said simply.

  “As am I. For everything. But it’s over now.”

  * * *

  That night Paul joined Moussa and Serena at the fire.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Paul said to Serena as Moussa poured them all tea. “I think I really might have shot you.”

  She shook her head. “But you didn’t. You couldn’t, even after all you had been through.”

  “There was a time when I too would have said I couldn’t. But I wasn’t me anymore. I knew it, but I didn’t seem to be able to stop it.” He stared into the fire, and when he continued his voice was a whisper. “The things that happened to me weren’t as bad as the things I did. No one knows the worst parts. No one but me. I keep imagining – hoping – I was only watching it all happen, instead of doing it myself, but I know it isn’t true. Things got all twisted somehow. I found out there’s a monster inside me. I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.”

  “I saw what happened at Tadjenout,” Moussa said, “and I know about Aïn El Kerma. I don’t know if I would have reacted any differently than you did.”

  “I wonder. I found myself standing over Tamrit, holding his sword and doing the same thing to him he had done to us. The whole time I kept telling myself I was doing it for honor. For honor! The thought frightens me more than anything in my life. And now Tamrit and Mahdi are dead. But others will rise to take their place, just as someone will rise to take mine. So after all the killing, nothing will have been accomplished.”

  They talked for hours, trying to find sense in any of it, and as they talked Paul felt the terrible weight beginning to lift from his soul. He was awakening at last from his long nightmare.

  After Paul had said good night Serena sat talking alone with her son. She worried for Moussa. “It will be difficult for you when the amenokal arrives with Attici,” she said. “There are many who are angry with you for the way you tried to help Flatters.”

  “I didn’t try to help him so much as I tried to keep us from hurting ourselves.”

  “Few will understand the difference.”

  He shrugged. “All my life people have hated me – for my birth, or for something else. I’ve been too much of one thing and not enough of another. Too noble or too common, too Tuareg or too French, or not enough of either. Not Catholic, not Muslim. Always an infidel.” He saw her eyes mist at that, and reached to take her hand.

  “It is not something to fault, Maman. I have always been stuck between worlds. I don’t remember it being any better in France than here. It was worse in some ways.” He smiled ruefully. “Sister Godrick gave me as much pain as any son of the desert. More, really. I’ve always been an outsider, on the wrong side of things. I don’t suppose that will ever change.”

  He watched as a cinder rose from the fire to the sky, and lost himself there in the blanket of stars. He saw Orion’s sword and thought of Taka. It was the season to find another hawk, a young one to nurture and train.r />
  “Daia wants to see other places,” he said finally. “You’ve been talking to her while I was away, I see. She is more than a nomad; I think she has my father’s need to travel. I’ve wondered what it would be like to see France again. I think I might take her and Tashi and show her what little I know of it, although now we’ll all be strangers there. I loved the château and the woods were beautiful, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I wouldn’t know what to do with a roof over my head. I had a roof in Timimoun. I didn’t like it.”

  “What will you tell Paul about his mother?” Moussa had told her about Jubar Pasha’s confession, that Mahdi and Tamrit had engineered his ransom while Elisabeth had paid El Hussein for his death.

  “Nothing, I think. There is no point. He knows her as well as anyone, and this would only hurt him. He will find out what he needs to find out. And he will make a good count, if he wants it.”

  “Do you want it, at all?”

  He shrugged. “The title means nothing to me, any more than the money. Better to leave it to Elisabeth and her little schemes, if she wants it so much.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that. And about telling Paul. He knows his mother, certainly, but he doesn’t know this. This is more than one of her little schemes, Moussa. She tried to have you killed. It is something he must know. Something he must hear from you.”

  “After everything that’s happened, I worry it will only make him hate me again. I don’t want that.”

  “Nor do I. But you have no choice.”

  * * *

  The next night Moussa cooked brochettes of goat over the fire and told Paul the story. Paul was stunned by the accusation. At first he stalked angrily away from the fire, pacing in the shadows at the edge of camp, denying it to himself and to Moussa. But then, as he thought about it, he knew it was true. Under the circumstances Jubar Pasha would not have lied to Moussa. More important, he’d watched his mother for a lifetime, and knew her obsession with wealth and position. As much as the thought devastated him, he knew in his heart that she was quite capable of striking such a bargain.

  He stopped pacing and slumped to a sitting position by the fire. He stared into the flames. “I feel more lost than ever now,” he said. “My God, the thought of it. I want to strangle her, Moussa.”

  “The thought had occurred to me as well.”

  “Short of that, I don’t know what to do. Maybe we should turn her over to the police.”

  “Which police? African? If Jubar Pasha survived, he is the police. I’m certain he didn’t, but we’re not going to accomplish anything in Timimoun. And in France they’d never be able to prove anything.”

  “Well, then, maybe we could ransom her somehow,” Paul said. “Teach her a lesson.”

  Moussa laughed grimly. “You’d only have to buy her back.”

  “There’s got to be something.”

  “Do you even want what she’s been plotting to have? The estate, or the title?”

  “I never really allowed myself to consider it. It was always yours, by right. I don’t know that it matters to me, really. At the moment it certainly seems unimportant.”

  “I don’t know much about the law in these things. I suppose if nothing else happens, everything will pass to you anyway.”

  “More likely to Mother, if I know her,” Paul mused. “She’s been maneuvering in court for years. I have no idea what she’s done. She sent me a letter a few months ago. I read it in Wargla but never wrote back. If I remember she said everything would be final in December.” Paul brooded for a while. “I know you don’t want it, and I don’t either. Certainly not everything that’s there. But after what Mother has done it would be wrong to simply leave things the way they are. We have to do something. She must be held accountable.”

  “I’m out of ideas,” Moussa said.

  “You didn’t have any ideas,” Paul reminded him.

  “I guess not.”

  Paul stood and warmed his back on the fire and then turned around. He was staring absently into the flames, watching the meat roasting on skewers, when a notion came to him. As he thought of it a slow grin spread on his face. “Moussa!” Excitedly he began talking, at first just thinking out loud. Moussa asked a lot of questions and his enthusiasm began to grow. Inevitably, Moussa added a few refinements, and soon the two men were chattering like mad, planning and drinking sweet tea. They sat under the stars and the hours flew by and the night passed to dawn.

  CHAPTER 35

  At long last, the old count and his heirs were legally dead.

  Long live the new count!

  Elisabeth had planned a grand afternoon reception, at which she intended to make the formal announcement. She regretted that Paul would not be there, that he was still playing soldier in Africa. In fact she had had no word at all from Paul, although a month earlier the commandant of the garrison in Wargla had written to assure her that the lieutenant who was fast becoming a desert legend was still very much among the living, but that regrettably, he did not know where. She had known that much from the newspapers, which had reported enthusiastically about the second lieutenant crushing the Saharan uprising, the man who had repeatedly refused promotion and lived and traveled like a native. The story was captivating the press, and the fickle winds of public opinion had begun to shift in a favorable direction. To her delight her son was becoming famous.

  She regretted his absence, but the reception would not wait a moment longer. Paul would understand. It was, after all, for him.

  And then two telegrams brought glorious word. The first, delivered on a silver tray by the butler, made it seem to her as if God Himself had orchestrated the timing. It said simply:

  I have resigned my commission. I am coming home.

  Her heart raced at the wondrous omen. At last he had come to his senses! Elisabeth had never been happier. Yet less than an hour later her joy found new heights when the butler gave her a second telegram.

  It is my sad burden to report to you the unfortunate death of Moussa, the Count deVries. I will soon present myself to you to express my most sincere condolences.

  El Hussein

  * * *

  Paul’s carriage turned down the long tree-lined drive to the Château deVries. He listened to the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves on the cobblestone and reveled in the familiar sights. The air was crisp and the trees had lost their leaves. He smelled wood smoke from the chimney of the château. It was glorious to be in France.

  He saw that the grounds and château were teeming with extra staff, and he permitted himself a little smile. Of course, his mother had planned a party; he should have guessed. It gave him an idea. He looked at his watch. There was still plenty of time. He would make his mother squirm a little before the real party began.

  Elisabeth greeted him with her usual breathless cheer, as if he’d been gone but a week and written every day. She regarded his clothing with disdain, turning up her nose at the unsavory appearance of the new count, still dressed in his flannel desert wardrobe. “You really must freshen yourself,” she said. “Your guests are due to begin arriving.”

  “My guests?”

  “Of course! A celebration! Now come along for a moment, so that I can tell you why.” She drew him into the study and pulled the door closed. “Paul, it is the most wonderful thing,” she said. “A present for your homecoming. The court has declared you the new count. The papers are on their way here now.”

  “Really,” he said.

  “Is that all you can say? ‘Really’? I thought you’d be happy. In your telegram you said you were ready.”

  “It’s difficult to be happy if it means Uncle Henri and Moussa are really dead.” He watched her face carefully for any reaction, but she was as smooth as ever.

  “Of course it is, dearest. But we must accept it, and move along.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said. “On the train I was thinking.”

  “Can’t it wait?” she asked. “Our guests will begin arriving any m
oment. You must change into something more appropriate.”

  “Certainly it can wait, Mother,” he said obediently.

  “Good,” she nodded, “we can discuss it later. Now if you don’t mind I—”

  “It’s just that I don’t want to be count,” he said. “I’m going to renounce the title. Everything.”

  She gasped, mortified. “You cannot! It is too late! And what of my friends? They are all coming for this!”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, but I didn’t ask you to have a party. I don’t want it. If the title’s mine as you say I’ll give it away.” He thought his voice was masterfully indifferent, and hoped he wouldn’t give himself away by appearing to enjoy her obvious discomfort. He would let her panic for a while. He knew it was cruel, but he enjoyed it.

  “This is utter nonsense. You’ve been too long in the sun! This is not the sort of thing one gives away. It is your duty to accept your station in life. Do that now, Paul. Afterward you will be free to do whatever you wish. Don’t you see?” Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  “Too much happened in Africa. I’ve come to realize it means nothing to me.”

  “Well, it means something to me!”

  “Then be my guest, Mother. You take it.”

  “You know I can’t!”

  “I’m sorry, Mother. Neither can I.”

  She was becoming truly alarmed. “You must! Your father would expect you to do it. He would tell you to do it for the honor of the deVrieses.”

  “What would he care about this? He walked out on his family.”

  “No, he didn’t!” Elisabeth railed. “His letter proved—!” She caught herself, knowing she’d made a terrible error, but she recovered with grace and there was barely an interruption in the flow of her words. “His career, his entire life, proved that he cared about honor. There was nothing more important to him than that.”