City of Jasmine

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  We began by talking of the state of archaeology after the war and this rather naturally led to a discussion of what it had been like during those tumultuous years.

  “Awful,” Miss Green said mournfully. “It was the purest form of agony not being able to get here to dig and having no idea what was happening to our sites.”

  “Had you been digging here before the war?” I asked, idly toying with a bit of flatbread.

  “We had all been here at various sites,” Countess Thurzó put in. I noticed that Herr Doktor had fallen silent and seemed a little morose. No doubt talk of the war was a difficult thing for a man who had been on the wrong side of it. I asked him what he thought of the location and he nodded slowly.

  “Yes, there is no better spot on earth than the Badiyat ash-Sham for excavation,” he said.

  “Really? You surprise me, Herr Doktor. I would have thought Egypt—” Before I could finish, he waved his hands.

  “Not at all, Frau Starke! Oh, the Egyptians have their ancient kings, but this is all. If you peel away the Greco-Roman influence, what is there? Uninteresting people doing uninteresting things in rock tombs. But here!” He opened his arms expansively. “Here the whole world was at a crossroads. This is the Silk Road, madame, and it is here that merchants came from as far away as China and Persia, winding down the Tian Shan mountains, crossing vast expanses of steppes to bring silks and spices. They came from India, from Nepal, out of the Hindu Kush they came, carrying with them all the secrets of the east in their camel caravans from Baghdad to Palmyra to Damascus. And from Europe we went out to meet them, bringing our God and our gold. We traded philosophies, and music and dance, and when our Crusader knights came to these lands, they collected these things and took them back to Europe.”

  His bright blue eyes were shining as he talked, painting a vivid picture of life as it had once been.

  “Imagine it, dear lady, when the camel caravans walked these stony hills, laden with their perfumes and silks, the fat merchants and the wily thieves who preyed upon them. For they were vulnerable, these rich men who came bearing goods from the mountains across the plains. The desert tribes learned to attack them and carry off their treasures on swift horses. But still they came, for the trading was too good, and in this way everyone profited.”

  “You make it all sound quite romantic, Herr Doktor,” I told him.

  Countess Thurzó gave a short laugh. “Not entirely. They brought bubonic plague with their pretty silks. But Herr Doktor likes to see only the lovely, isn’t that right?”

  He gave her a sad smile. “It is true, it makes life more pleasant this way. The youth today, you do not always see that it is better to look for the beauty in life. But, alas, Countess Thurzó is not wrong. The Silk Road lasted until gunpowder and disease took their tolls. But before this, ah, madame, what a time to be alive!” He pointed out the window. “Can you not see them if you try? The Persian conquerors who once swept over this land like a plague? Or the plump merchants with their laden camels? Or the Crusader knights who believed this land was once promised to them by God?”

  “That’s right,” I said, “this was once part of the kingdom of the Outremer, was it not?”

  “The kingdom over the sea,” Miss Green said a little dreamily. It amused me that she was not immune to the romanticism of the German Doktor.

  “When all the great kings of Christendom united to fight the infidel and claim this land where Jesus once trod in His own name,” he added.

  “I don’t know,” Count Thurzó said, his expression thoughtful. “My sympathies have always been with Salah al-Dln.”

  “Mine, too,” I told him with a grin.

  “Yes, well, enough of metaphorically raking up dead bones,” said Miss Green briskly. “We ought to go outside and get to the real thing.”

  We dispersed then, but Countess Thurzó gave me a long look as she walked away, and I suddenly felt quite alone out in the desert with a group of strangers. I smiled at Miss Green. “I think I’ll lie down for just a bit.”

  She nodded. “The heat. It takes newcomers sometimes. Just be very glad you’re here in late winter. Summer doesn’t even bear thinking about.”

  She bustled away to get back to work and I made my way back to the tent we shared. It took me approximately three seconds to realize my things had been searched. It had been done in haste, and things had been put back almost but not quite the way I left them. Doubtless whoever did it figured I wouldn’t notice, but then they weren’t flyers. I was, and I had been trained by the best. Ryder might have been a daredevil with half a death wish, but he’d been raised in the African bush, where a moment’s inattention can kill you. He took his flying seriously and the one thing he had beaten into my brain was method. Day in and day out we drilled the same things, and he had told me stories that curled my hair about how little slackness it took to kill a flyer who wasn’t careful. Order, method and attention to detail—those were the things that kept a pilot safe, and I’d left his tutelage as well-trained as any aviator could be. I had thought he was training me to be a pilot, but the truth was he’d trained me to be an adult. I’d learned to follow through with things, to plan ahead and most important to check my gear. I knew where every item in my possession was and I knew how I’d left it.

  And as I tidied away the few items I had brought with me, I noted that nothing was missing, only disarranged. My papers in particular had been thoroughly gone over, but there was nothing in them to indicate anything unusual. There were a few maps, some identification papers and a few unanswered letters from friends back home—perfectly appropriate and expected for a traveller abroad. Gabriel’s photograph and the two banknotes were buttoned securely into my pocket along with the little pearl-handled pistol Aunt Dove had given me. I hadn’t brought anything of real value with me except my wedding ring and that was still on a chain around my neck, tucked inside my clothes. Whoever tossed my things must have been mightily disappointed, I thought with a smile. No doubt some poor worker, driven to exhaustion for low wages, had seized the opportunity for a little petty theft. It was just his bad luck that I hadn’t anything more valuable than my hairbrush on hand.

  Seven

  The rest of the day passed quietly. The workers dug, the staff supervised and the sun beat down mercilessly overhead. We all washed and met for another somewhat stilted meal. The odd atmosphere at the luncheon table stayed, no doubt made worse by Gabriel’s foul temper in the guise of Dr. Rowan. One of the men had unearthed a sizeable potsherd only to break it through clumsy handling, and Rowan’s reaction could be heard all over the dig site. He swore loudly in English and fluent Arabic, sometimes lapsing into sputtering as he tore at his hair and gestured wildly. He fretted over the loss of the potsherd at dinner, and resisted all attempts by Miss Green to jolly him out of it.

  To my surprise, he did not retire early, but sat, nursing a glass of whisky and sucking at his false teeth in irritation as he perused the latest issue of the Revue Archéologique. After a while the others began to talk more naturally, and everyone seemed in better spirits as we turned in for the night. Miss Green fell asleep almost immediately, but I lay awake again, staring into the darkness. The moon had waned and the night was much darker with only starlight to illuminate the long plain of the rocky desert. I turned onto my side, and just then I heard the sound again, the faint coaxing of the pan-pipes, rising on the night air.

  I listened for any movement, but Miss Green was snoring heavily. Slowly, carefully, I eased out of the cot and slipped into my clothes. I shook out my boots and slid my feet into them, lacing them as best I could by feel. I had fallen into the habit of keeping the pistol on me, so I slipped it into my pocket. The music was fainter now and I fumbled with the fastenings of the flap. At last I was out in the chill of the desert night, pausing only a moment to let my eyes grow accustomed to the starlight and the pale shimmer of the rising moon.
I could barely make out the traces of the stones at my feet and I picked my way carefully towards the music. It seemed to be coming from the ruin of the castle keep, and I cursed myself for not bringing a torch. It felt like hours before I reached the stones, but I kept going, lured on by the faint sound of the music. As I crept closer, I could just make out the faint glow of a lantern.

  I moved slowly over the stones, falling twice and nearly breaking my neck once. And with every stumble I cursed Gabriel and his sense of the theatrical. By the time I found him in the remains of the chapel in the crumbling castle, I was ready to give him a piece of my mind. He held up his hand and put a finger to his lips as soon as I opened my mouth. He beckoned and I followed him behind the altar and down a narrow, twisting stone stair. It led into a tiny crypt where a pair of Crusader knights had been laid to rest. Their stone effigies were crumbling to dust, but I could just make out the proud features of their faces. One had been sculpted lying in the traditional pose but the other was sitting upright, his blind stone eyes staring out at the world. It was an arresting piece and any other time I would have paused to admire it, but at the moment I was too enraged to take it all in. Gabriel popped back up to the chapel to make sure we weren’t followed, and by the time he returned, I’d built up a full head of steam.

  “Gabriel Starke, this is not what I signed on for. Those pan-pipes are the most absurd—”

  “And effective,” he said, spitting his mouthpiece into his palm. “Anyone hearing them might assume it was one of the local lads having a bit of fun. No one would associate the thing with me except you.” He pocketed the pipes and took off his dark spectacles, rubbing his eyes with his thumbs. “Christ, that feels better.”

  “Don’t swear,” I told him. “You’re in a church.”

  “If you didn’t like that, you really won’t appreciate this. Why the f—” I held up a hand and he moderated himself. “What the devil are you doing here? I told you in the plainest terms that you were to wait for me in Damascus. Now, kindly explain to me how you heard that to mean, ‘Please come out and find me in the middle of the desert’?”

  I studied the effigies and waited for him to finish. Gabriel could rant with the best of them, and I had learned during our brief marriage it was best for him to get it out of his system before attempting to reply. He cleared his throat impatiently.

  I turned back to him. “Oh, is it my turn? I wanted to make sure you’d done all your fussing first. It was always so distracting when you kept on and on about something.”

  “I never—” he began, but snapped his mouth shut hard. His jaws were grinding against one another, and I shook my head.

  “Don’t do that. It’s very bad for your teeth.”

  “Evangeline Rosemary Merryweather Starke, there is absolutely nothing to prevent me from shooting you and leaving your body here for the jackals. Don’t try my patience.”

  I snorted. “Don’t be stupid. Jackals would never manage those stairs,” I said with more bravado than I felt. For all I knew, jackals were ace stair climbers. “Now, as to why I’ve come, I should think that would be obvious. I thought you needed help.”

  He stared at me, his lips parted in astonishment. “You’re not that daft,” he said in a dazed voice. “You cannot be.”

  “Well, apparently I am because I’m here,” I returned cheerfully.

  “I don’t know whether to kiss you or kill you,” he murmured, sitting heavily on the stone lap of a sitting knight.

  “Neither, if you please. I’m not sure which would be more disturbing. Now, I am right, aren’t I? You are in some sort of trouble?”

  His annoyance seemed to drop away, and when he spoke it was with an air of resignation. “You could say that. I ran into difficulties getting the item. I decided it was better to stay here and keep my head down. I’m sorry for that. I really wanted to get the find to you.”

  I blinked at him. “My God. Being dead agrees with you. Do you realise that’s the first time you’ve ever apologised to me?”

  “Is it? How curious.”

  “Isn’t it? Now, what sort of trouble and what can I do to help?”

  “Why the devil should you want to?” he demanded. “Evie, I lied to you. I committed the grossest, rankest betrayal. I pretended I was dead. You ought to be furious with me.”

  “Who says I’m not?”

  “Well, you’re doing a damned fine job of behaving otherwise.”

  I sighed. “Gabriel, what you did was unforgivable. But I have learned a lot since you left me in Shanghai, and one of the things I’ve learned is how to put things in a cupboard and shut the door when it isn’t time to deal with them.”

  His brow furrowed. “Come again?”

  “It’s basic pilot training. You cannot fly if you’re emotional. In fact, it’s one of the main objections to teaching women to fly at all. In order to get my licence, I had to prove I could be as dispassionate as any man. I had to take whatever I was feeling at any given moment—rage, fatigue, euphoria, anything—and put it aside to focus entirely on the job at hand. I had to learn to separate myself from any situation and assess it coolly and without prejudice.”

  “Something I know a little about,” he said with a wry twist of his lips.

  “I imagine so. Now, don’t think for a minute I have forgotten or forgiven. I haven’t. You behaved unspeakably. But this is my chance to get rid of you forever, with a perfectly clear conscience, and I intend to take it.”

  His eyes brightened with something like malice. “Does that mean your conscience wasn’t already clear where I was concerned?”

  “I may have made some mistakes in our marriage,” I conceded.

  “Mistakes?” He laughed aloud. “You dared me to divorce you.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and gave him a cool glance. “Do you really want to hash all of that out now? Or shall we get to the matter at hand? What sort of criminal game are you playing and how can I help you get out of it?”

  He was silent a moment, clearly weighing how much to tell me. “Fine,” he said at last. “I haven’t been able to retrieve the item I wanted to give you. Things are at sixes and sevens just now in the Badiyat ash-Sham, and there are any number of villains about. It makes things awkward.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m terribly sorry for your inconvenience. Now, suppose you tell me what this find is and we can proceed from there.”

  He smiled, his eyes sparkling with some unholy delight. “It’s quite remarkable.” He paused, waiting for me to start guessing, but I refused to play. I studied my nails instead. “I mean, it’s extraordinary, Evie. The find of a lifetime—of a century.”

  I buffed my nails on my shirt and swore. “I’m sure all archaeologists think that about their pet finds,” I said sweetly. I yawned. “You always did love melodrama, Gabriel. What is it? A gold seal? A glazed pot? A mummy?”

  He fixed me with a cold look. “A Levantine mummy would hardly generate any interest whatsoever in archaeological circles as you well know, so stop pretending to be stupid and think of where you are.”

  “We are outside Damascus, the most ancient inhabited city in the world, the site of Crusader sieges—”

  His face had taken on an alert look, and I caught the smell of something tantalising. “It’s a Crusader relic.”

  “Not a Crusader relic,” he corrected. “The Crusader relic.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, you will have to narrow it down! Crusader knights were as prolific a set of liars as modern politicians. They claimed to have bodies of saints, the Holy Grail, the True Cross—” I broke off again as he smiled a slow, triumphant smile.

  “You aren’t serious. You cannot have found it.”

  “But I did.”

  “The True Cross,” I whispered. It wasn’t possible. St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great and inveterate magpie of
religious relics, had travelled to the Holy Land to collect the True Cross, not scrupling about a bit of torture to get her way. When she’d found it, she had cut it up and had the largest bit set in a gold-and-silver cross studded with precious gems. The result had been dazzling to look at and so sacred it had been carried into battle at the head of armies. It was rumoured the thing could cure the dying and even change the direction of the wind.

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Gabriel Starke, that cross was lost at the Battle of Hattin. Saladin himself took it from the Bishop of Acre, and afterwards he carried it into Damascus in triumph. It was never seen again. It was lost to history.”

  “Until now.”

  His smile was exultant, but I shook my head. “You cannot have found it,” I repeated.

  “I am not a man to be underestimated,” he reminded me.

  “You always do this,” I murmured. “Just when I think you can’t surprise me, you pull another rabbit from the hat. Just how many tricks do you have up those filthy sleeves?”

  His smile was undiminished. “As many as I need.”

  I cudgelled my brain, dredging up every last fact he had ever told me about the Cross. “Little wonder you’ve had trouble getting it out of the desert,” I remarked. “If the Bishop of Acre carried it at the head of an army, it must be massive.”

  “It was. Once,” he corrected. “Western chronicles didn’t record it, but the Cross was badly damaged in the Battle of Hattin. Much of it was burned, and what Saladin took to Damascus was a fragment. The portion he salvaged was embedded in the floor of the Great Mosque and it stayed there until Tamerlane sacked the city in 1400. He burned the mosque, and the cross was taken up again and carried off to Samarkand. It was forgot for many years, but eventually it made its way back here, to the Badiyat ash-Sham, to a group of Christian monks who had the thing reset in gold and crystal. But shortly after it was finished, one of the habitual tribal wars broke out, and the monks were scattered. One of them managed to hide the Cross for safekeeping and left a notation of its whereabouts in a manuscript. I came across the manuscript a while back and followed the trail to the Cross.”