The hoof prints of two hundred gazelle had obliterated her own tracks, but it didn’t matter. She knew the camp lay just over the next hillock beyond that little acacia tree.
For the first time all day her bowels felt settled, and her stomach growled. She was ravenous and her mouth watered at the thought of food, even the same old goat and barley stew. She topped the rise, expecting to see friends and camels and campfires in the riverbed below, but there was nothing. Only more scrubby hillocks. It must be the next one.
She reached the crest of the next rise, and just before the sun set she had time to see there was no riverbed here either. Where was it? She was sure it had been here.
Flavia looked frantically around. Nothing but hillocks and a few stunted acacias or tamarisks. No smoke. No sound but the wind.
‘Jonathan!’ cried Flavia. ‘Nubia! Lupus! Where are you?’
Silence. The colour drained from the sky as she ran. It was mauve now with a star or two sparking up high, and trees and bushes flat and black on the horizon. There! That acacia tree. She had passed it earlier.
Presently she stopped running and stood on the top of a rise breathing hard. This was ridiculous. Her friends must be very near. She called out their names, again and again, until her voice was hoarse.
She mustn’t despair. She could still find them. They must be just over the next ridge.
‘Oh please, Juno,’ she prayed. ‘Please, Castor and Pollux. Please, God of Jonathan. Let them be there.’
But although it was now quite dark, starlight showed the next dip between hillocks was empty, just like all the others.
She could no longer avoid the truth: she was hopelessly lost.
On Flavia’s left, a full moon detached itself from the horizon and floated up, as large and yellow as the yolk of an ostrich egg. And with its rising came the wind. Now she imagined she heard voices calling her. She called back, her voice a hoarse croak. But there was no reply. Only the moaning wind.
She stood on the crest of a hillock, looking around for something familiar. Now that the sun had set, she was cold. But all she had was her long-sleeved cotton caftan and her turban. She unwrapped the turban and folded it double and draped it around her shoulders. It helped a little.
Keeping the rising moon on her left, she headed south. She must reach the wadi soon. Had she passed it somehow?
In the moonlight, the sparse desert vegetation was deceptive. What she took for a distant tree was a little stunted bush, only a few paces away. And what she believed to be a shrub turned out to be a full-grown acacia, its trunk hidden by a rise in the terrain.
Once she saw her three friends standing in a row.
‘Here!’ she cried, sobbing with relief. ‘Here I am!’
But as she ran towards the shapes, they resolved themselves into three tamarisk bushes.
At last she saw what she was sure was the silhouette of a kneeling camel, black against the star-choked sky. She ran towards it and had almost reached it when its outlines shifted to show yet another bush.
But this one had something hiding among its branches. Flavia gasped as a dark shape within the foliage stirred and she found herself staring into the glowing orange eyes of a ghul. ‘Bhooo!’ it cried, in a deep terrible voice. ‘Bhooo!’
With terrible slow deliberation, the ghul raised up its dark arms and floated silently towards her.
All the other apparitions had been her imagination.
But this one was real.
Flavia heard her own scream, strangely remote, and now the star-choked sky was below her, and she was falling down into it.
Flavia woke up sometime after midnight. She lifted herself onto her elbows, then sat up. She had seen Zabda’s ghul, and lived!
She rose to her feet, shivering. The cold had taken away her thirst, but not her fear. The wind was still moaning and the full moon stood small and cold at the top of the sky. She scanned the moonlit desert, hoping for the glow of a golden fire among the silver and black.
Nothing.
If she walked, the movement would warm her. But her steps might take her further from the morning’s search party.
Suddenly she had an idea. With her teeth she ripped several strips from the end of her blue cotton turban, each about as long and wide as her forearm. Then she went to the ghul bush. Up close, she saw it was not very tall – only about half her height – and she was able to tie one of the strips to the highest branch. If she left cloth strips on every shrub or bush she passed, they might guide a search-party to her.
And now she needed to walk west. The moon at its zenith was not a reliable marker, so she looked for the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the little bear. This was the star her father used on clear nights at sea. She stretched out both her arms, in the position of a crucified man, then turned her whole body, and lifted her right arm to point at the North Star. The North Star on her right should keep her heading west, the direction she knew the caravan was travelling. That way, even if she had wandered too far south or north, at least she would be travelling parallel to her friends.
The moon had started its descent, and once again it cast strange black shadows, making even the smallest shrub appear to be a crouching leopard or a desert demon.
Suddenly she saw something that made her heart sink: a strip of cloth tied to one of the thorny branches.
For the last few hours she had been walking in a giant circle.
Flavia sank onto the sandy ground, too parched to cry. She closed her eyes and prayed to Diana. ‘Please help me, goddess Diana.’ She spoke in her mind, because her tongue was too dry to form the words. ‘You brought me on this quest. Please don’t abandon me.’
A moment later, her head was suddenly filled with a sweet, heady scent: myrrh. She opened her eyes and looked at the thorny shrub. She had not tied any pieces of cloth to a myrrh bush.
She crawled closer and sniffed. Sure enough, the stunted tree was the source of the scent. And now that she was closer to it, she saw it wasn’t a scrap of her turban. It was someone else’s turban, half unwound. Hers was pale blue. This one was indigo blue, or perhaps black.
She hadn’t been going in a circle after all.
The much bigger strip of cloth was caught on the sharp thorns of the branches and she carefully pulled it free and wrapped it around her shoulders. It was thicker and warmer than her remnant of cotton turban, and it comforted her. She lay down beneath the myrrh tree’s thorny branches and looked up at the moon, sinking down towards the west.
She might not have been walking in circles, but she was still hopelessly lost. She would never see her friends again. Or her dog Scuto or her uncle or Alma. Or her adored father. Of all her regrets, this was the worst: that she had parted from him in anger.
The sweet scent of myrrh enveloped her, heavy as a drug, and she thought that if she had to die, it might as well be here beneath this perfumed tree.
In Flavia’s dream, Diana the huntress was running in the moonlit desert.
In one hand she held her bow, and the arrows rattled in her quiver. The joy of the hunt filled her heart and the wind tugged her hair. Presently Diana stopped and looked around, puzzled. She was alone. No hunting dogs. No virgin companions. The desert suddenly seemed an empty, sterile place.
Then the wind brought the distant sound of flutes and tambourines to her ears and she turned.
Coming across the desert was a procession led by a woman. The woman walked sedately, and hundreds of people of all ages followed her. Her head was modestly covered, and as she came closer, Diana saw that the woman held a baby in her arms.
Diana the huntress was alone and in darkness. But this woman had two thousand attendants and their faces showed quiet joy. Who were they?
Diana’s chest tightened and she felt a strange unwelcome emotion: a softness that was repulsive to her. Angrily plucking an arrow from her quiver, she notched it to the string and with a single fluid motion she drew the bow and brought the arrow to her cheek. She aimed at the baby, but jus
t as she was about to loose the arrow, the woman stopped and turned and looked directly at her.
The woman’s gaze held such tenderness and love, that it was like an arrow in Diana’s heart.
‘No!’ she cried. Her arrow flew off harmlessly into the darkness and her bow fell to the barren desert terrain.
The woman smiled and extended her hand towards Diana. But the huntress’s pride would not let her follow.
So the procession moved on. And when it finally passed, Diana was alone.
The first thing Flavia saw the next morning were two vultures hopping in the dust no more than twelve feet away from her.
She tried to scream, but her mouth was too parched to make a sound. She pushed herself up on her elbows, then gasped as three vicious thorns stabbed her scalp. Blinking away tears, she crawled out from underneath the myrrh bush and ran at the macabre birds. They flapped up into the air, then rose higher as she flung stones at them.
They remained circling in the air above her. Nothing she could do would make them go away.
Flavia gazed around in despair. Apart from a few scattered acacia trees, the rolling savannah was as featureless as the sea. No approaching camels. No smudge of campfire smoke. She felt like an ant in the middle of the arena.
The scent of the myrrh bush was making her dizzy so she moved away from it and breathed in the pure desert air. It was still cool but soon it would grow warm. Her head hurt and she pressed her right palm against it. When she brought her hand away she saw blood from the thorns. Taking the indigo strip of cotton from around her shoulders, she tied it as a turban around her head. Then she began to walk west, away from the rising sun. Her shadow stretched out before her, thin and lonely with an elongated turban on its head.
She knew without looking up that the vultures were still circling above her. There was something indescribably evil about their constant presence. A sudden nausea made her stop and rest her hands on her knees and take deep breaths. When the dizziness passed, she lifted her water-skin and directed the spout towards her mouth. Still dry. On an impulse, she opened her little camel leather belt-pouch and searched inside. Right at the bottom was a garlic-shaped, radish-coloured colanut. What was it Nubia had said? These are very good for when you are hungry or tired.
She put it in her mouth and began to chew. A bitter taste flooded her mouth, so intense that she was tempted to spit it out, but it had made her saliva flow, and that must be good. So she continued to chew, and presently found the taste almost pleasant.
It was a fine pure day, without a breath of wind.
Her step quickened and a tiny seed of hope blossomed in her heart. A low violet smudge lay on the western horizon. Those must be the mountains Macargus had mentioned. Between her and the mountains lay Assan’s oasis. She might reach it after all and find her friends waiting, with dates and bread and salt. And cold, sweet water.
Her shadow had shrunk to only twice her height when she came face to face with the ghul.
The creature was perched in an acacia tree. He was golden brown and his ears – sharp as clay shards – pointed straight up. The ghul’s back was to her but when her foot scuffed a pebble, he slowly swivelled his entire head to face her. Then he opened huge orange eyes and blinked.
The ghul blinked orange eyes at Flavia, then slowly raised his wings. Silent as a cinder, he drifted up and out of the tree.
Flavia smiled weakly and shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘You’re only an owl!’ she thought. ‘A very big desert owl.’ She watched him diminish against the blue sky and land in an acacia much further away. Then her eyes focused on something just beyond the place where the owl had settled: something like a black pip wobbling on the heat haze of the horizon. It seemed to be a rider on a lone camel.
Was it another mirage? Or could it really be a rider? And if it was a rider, was he friend or foe?
It was Iddibal, the black-robed camel-driver.
He reached Flavia within a quarter of an hour and leapt off his camel and ran to her and let her drink squirts of water from his goatskin.
‘Not too much,’ he said presently. He spoke Greek, in a deep growl. ‘Not too fast.’ Flavia nodded and waited, then sipped a little more. It was so good! She felt tears of gratitude and relief waiting to squeeze out, but they would have to wait. She was still too dehydrated.
‘How did you find me?’ she croaked at last.
‘Your two friends.’ He pointed up.
Flavia tipped back her head and saw the two vultures circling overhead in the hot blue sky.
‘They guide me straight to you,’ Iddibal continued in his deep-voiced Greek, and he helped her mount his black camel. She felt the familiar forward surge as the camel straightened his hind legs, and as the camel extended its forelegs she rocked back against Iddibal’s chest, as comforting as her father’s. Iddibal turned the camel and as they started east, towards the sun, Flavia took regular little sips from the waterskin.
She was exhausted physically and emotionally and the comforting swaying of the camel soon caused her to doze off. Then something jerked her awake and she saw her friends waving from the shade of an acacia tree. She felt Iddibal’s chest expand and then he uttered a huge ululation and waved his right arm.
‘All this time the caravan was behind me,’ whispered Flavia in amazement. ‘I was ahead of you.’
‘Yes. We spend night and day search for you.’
‘Oh,’ said Flavia in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I must tell you something else,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘The men who were pursuing us. Ipalacen and sons. They were bad. They have knife hidden in clothes. They mean to steal you for slaves and kill us.’
‘They did?’
‘Yes. So do not be angry with the pretty dancer. He helps to save your life.’
Her friends greeted her and gave her dates and bread, but they did not have time to linger, for they had now been two days without water. Iddibal’s goatskin had contained the last of it.
Flavia slept on her camel, in Nubia’s arms, but presently stinging sand and the howl of wind woke her.
The camels had been walking beside the wadi – the dry riverbed – and now Macargus indicated that they should go down into it and make camp, even though it was not yet noon.
‘Shouldn’t we keep going?’ Flavia asked Nubia, pulling the tail of her indigo turban across her mouth and nose.
‘No,’ said Nubia, and her expression was grim. ‘In sandstorm you should always be taking shelter. They sometimes last three days,’ she murmured.
Macargus and his two camel-drivers arranged the kneeling camels as a windbreak, then struggled to erect low tents to keep out the worst of the storm.
Finally they all rested in the grey half-light of the black goatskin shelter. Outside the wind howled and groaned. The camels closed their double-lashed eyes and chewed their cuds stoically; they had drunk deeply three days previously and were unperturbed. It was their riders who needed water.
Nobody accused her, but Flavia knew it was all her fault. If she had not drunk five glasses of senna tea and held up the caravan with her latrine-breaks, they would have reached Assan’s oasis by now.
Nobody said so, but she also knew that if this howling sandstorm blew for more than a day, they might end up as bleached bones in the wadi.
Mercifully, the sandstorm abated the following day and they slowly packed the camels and continued west. Now there was sand everywhere: in their mouths, in their hair, in their clothes.
In silence they swayed towards the violet hills, now clear and jagged on the horizon. They travelled all that afternoon, right through the moonlit night and into the morning. Nubia had never been so thirsty.
As the sun rose she saw they had almost reached foothills, and that there was a gully up ahead with a promising fringe of something dark: date-palms.
Around noon that day the camels broke into an eager trot. Unlike their riders, they were not desperate for water, but they could
smell the oasis and they sensed it meant rest.
At last they were there, by a blue pool of water. The camels knelt without being told. Flavia was still weak, so Nubia helped her dismount. Then the two of them followed the others to the pool.
Nubia dipped her hands in the water, and splashed her face. ‘Do not drink too much, Flavia,’ she croaked, when she was able to speak. ‘After so long, too much water is deadly. Just take little sips.’ The water was slightly stagnant, but she could tell it was not bad.
‘Oh!’ cried Flavia. ‘It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.’
The others were beside them, splashing and laughing and drinking.
‘Don’t drink too much!’ cried Macargus hoarsely. ‘It’s dangerous to drink too much.’
Lupus waded out into the middle of the pool and fell backwards with a splash. When he rose up his wet tunic clung to his body and Flavia could see how skinny he had become.
‘Dates!’ cried Nubia, pointing up. They looked up and saw the tree laden with massive clusters of dates, some green, some yellow, some orange and some brown.
Lupus whooped and came splashing out of the pool. Then he tossed a stone up into the branches. This sent a shower of ripe dates raining down on their heads.
Assan ascended one of the palm-trunks as nimbly as a monkey and cut down more clusters. Man and beast devoured the sweet brown fruit.
‘They’re ambrosia!’ laughed Flavia. ‘The best thing I’ve ever tasted!’
Nubia nodded. ‘Now you are knowing why I love dates!’
That night Assan slaughtered their last goat and they all feasted together on goat stew and sour camel-milk pancakes. For dessert they had more dates washed down with date-sweetened mint tea. Because they intended to spend the next day resting in the oasis, they stayed up until almost midnight, singing and playing the happiest songs they knew.
Lupus woke sometime in the early hours, bloated and needing to use the latrine. Not wanting to awaken the others, he tiptoed around the moonlit forms of sleeping people and camels and went into the palm grove.
On his way back to camp, his sharp ears caught the murmur of voices. Following the sound, he discovered Narcissus and Casina standing in a clearing among lofty date palms. The moon shed a silver light on them, making their shadows – and those of the palms – ink-black.
The Roman Mysteries Complete Collection Page 209