Night of a Thousand Stars

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “Where are we going?” I asked. Sebastian shrugged, the muscles of his back rolling under my clasped arms.

  “Looking for a suitable site to camp for the night.”

  We’d been riding for hours, and although I would have died rather than admit it to Sebastian, I was thoroughly exhausted. I gave a sigh of impatience and dropped my head to his back. He jerked, nearly throwing himself off the horse. His sudden lurch irritated her and she tossed her head, crossing her feet sideways.

  “For God’s sake,” I muttered irritably. “What’s the matter with you? Anyone would think you were the Gothic heroine.”

  He reseated himself and calmed the dancing Albi. “Don’t do that again,” he ordered through gritted teeth.

  I sighed again. He was getting touchier and more irritable the longer we spent together, I decided. Perhaps rough travel didn’t agree with him. Or perhaps he wasn’t as comfortable with fieldwork as I had expected from someone who had spent his war years actively engaged in espionage.

  For that matter, I reasoned, he might not have been that active at all. His specialty had been languages. Clearly he had been sent to Syria to be close at hand if Gabriel needed assistance maintaining his cover as a dashing Bedouin hero out of folklore, but it seemed likely to me that Sebastian had spent his war years tucked away in an office waiting for Gabriel’s field reports and preparing memoranda for the London office. Even Gabriel’s remark about Sebastian’s prowess in a knife fight seemed like a joke. After all, he certainly hadn’t knifed Hugh when he had the chance. He’d merely incapacitated him and left as quickly as possible. I began to wonder if he was afflicted with a bit of genteel distaste for violence.

  It wasn’t entirely fair either, I decided. After casting off the shabby garb of an impoverished English curate, he looked like a hero out of myth. The least he could do was behave like one.

  I was still happily occupied in dissecting his character when Albi pulled us up over the lip of a rise onto a small plateau. Part of the plateau was rock but most was a narrow meadow with fresh grass for the horse and a thin stream trickling down from the snowy peaks in the far distance.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  Sebastian half-turned in the saddle. “In the Lebanon now. We slipped over the border some distance back. We’ve made good time in spite of riding double. We’re very near Sidon.” He lifted his hand and pointed. “And over there on that ridge is Djoun.”

  I gaped. “Lady Hester Stanhope’s home! But can’t we—”

  He knew exactly what I was about to ask. “We can’t stay there. The place is deserted now, but there’s a village at the base of the ridge full of curious folk who’d make note of travellers poking about.” He gave me a quick grin. “Besides, I’ve already been inside. It was a long shot that there would be anything of note left in the old ruin, but I made a point of breaking in and making a thorough search of the place.”

  “And there’s nothing left?” I shaded my eyes to make out the sprawl of the distant compound. “It looks simply enormous.”

  “Big enough,” he agreed. “And packed to the rafters with rubbish, not surprisingly. It’s changed hands a dozen times since Lady Hester’s death, and it gets more derelict with every new owner. Someone ought to pull it down and start over.”

  It was a disappointing coda to the thrill of stopping so close to Lady Hester’s old home. It seemed too cruel to be so near the place and not be able to step foot inside. I must have been fairly vibrating with excitement, because Sebastian flicked me a sideways look.

  “There won’t be gold here, Poppy. If she did find it and brought it here, it would have been discovered by now. But I thought you’d like to see it for yourself, and this little plateau will be as good a place as any to shelter for the night. Now, hush. I want to make certain there’s no one around before we get too comfortable.”

  But no sooner had he spoken than I felt him stiffen in the saddle. Just behind us, emerging onto the plateau was a party of horsemen. Sebastian wheeled Albi smartly and hissed through gritted teeth, “Let me handle this. Eyes down. No English.”

  He adopted a relaxed pose as he watched them pick their way towards us. There were three horsemen, and to my surprise, I saw as they came near they were Europeans—explorers of some sort. They wore unflattering khaki garb and their horses carried bulging saddlebags. They rode slowly, no doubt held up by the little donkey tethered to one of the horses, its back heaped with various cases and boxes.

  “Hello, there,” hailed the fellow in front. “I say, hello! Assalam aleikum,” he said, drawling the words heavily as he waved.

  Sebastian inclined his head with slow grace. “Aleikum assalam,” he returned.

  They closed the distance, and as they reached us, I realized the second horseman was in fact a woman. She rode astride like the men, and her costume was every bit as plainly serviceable.

  The last man was more preoccupied with getting the donkey where he was supposed to be, and the woman looked frankly bored, but the first man gave a wide smile and stood in his stirrups, gesturing broadly towards the plateau.

  “Did you mean to camp here, friend? Only it’s the best ground for miles, and we thought we’d do the same. D’ye speak English?”

  Sebastian inclined his head again. “I do. But my wife does not.”

  I suppressed a flicker of irritation and concentrated on looking mystified by the conversation.

  “Oh, splendid. I’m afraid my Arabic isn’t all it ought to be,” the man said. He removed his hat, showing a stripe of bright white skin above the flaming pink of his sunburnt brow. “My name is Johnson, Richard Johnson. This is my wife, Rosamund. And bringing up the rear back there is Alec MacGregor, Old Lecky we call him. We’re archaeologists on our way to a dig near Palmyra.”

  Sebastian gave him a long, cool look. “You are a long way from Palmyra, my friend.” He had adopted a slightly accented version of English with Rashid’s soft vowels. It was astonishing how different that little trick of the voice made him sound. He was suddenly quite foreign to me, and I understood then how far I had come from the girl who had run out on her wedding only a few short weeks before.

  Mr. Johnson laughed, a quick barking sound, like a fox. “Yes, we are. But it’s the missus’ first time in this part of the world. Thought she’d like to see where I spent my bachelor days,” he added with a wink.

  Sebastian nodded towards the end of the plateau. “There is a stream there with fresh water for your horses.”

  “And you don’t mind if we share the camping?” Mr. Johnson asked. The other two seemed to have no opinion on the matter. Mrs. Johnson was studying her nails and Old Lecky was trying to wake up the donkey, which seemed to have fallen asleep standing up.

  “Not at all,” Sebastian told him.

  “Very kind of you,” Mr. Johnson said. “You must share our meal as soon as Rosamund has prepared it. Perhaps your wife would lend a hand?”

  I kept my expression carefully blank but poked Sebastian in the back as he nodded. “Of course,” he said graciously. “You will permit us to wash first and water our horse?”

  “Absolutely, my dear fellow. Come along to our camp. We’ll pitch the tents now and start getting things in order.”

  Sebastian clicked to Albi and she surged forward. By the time we reached the stream, I was seething.

  “Are you quite mad?” I asked softly as I slid stiff-legged from Albi’s back. “You expect me to be able to keep up the fiction of not understanding English for an entire evening with those people? And since when do I cook your supper?”

  “Since I want to know more about our coincidental strangers,” he said with a grim look.

  “Coincidental? You don’t believe them?” I trotted behind as he led Albi to the water to take a deep drink.

  “I think their appearance is a little too timely. We’ve
been out of Damascus for exactly one day and already we encounter a party of fake archaeologists?”

  “How do you know they’re fakes?”

  He shrugged. “Intuition.”

  “Intuition? That’s not very spylike,” I grumbled.

  He rolled his eyes as he unstrapped Albi’s saddle. “What do you know of it? Intuition is nothing more than swift observation and calculation so rapid your mind doesn’t even register it. My instinct says they’re not what they seem. If you want particulars, you’ve no further to look than Johnson’s complexion.”

  “What’s the matter with his complexion?”

  “He’s badly sunburnt. An archaeologist who’s spent time in the field—as he claims he has—wouldn’t burn so badly. He would also have quite a collection of lines about his eyes from a lifetime of squinting at the sun. He’s got none in spite of his age. Neither has his portly little friend. They’re no more archaeologists than I am.”

  “All right, you’ve persuaded me. But what are they really doing here and why lie about it?”

  Sebastian shrugged. “They might be doing surveys secretly for the oil companies. You can’t ride a mile out here without stumbling over a group of them. And none of them ever tells the truth about what they’re doing for fear of tipping off the others to a likely spot.”

  I glanced about the meadow with its soft spring grass. “Is this a likely spot?”

  “No, but they said they were on the way to Palmyra. Much more promising landscape for that sort of thing. And Mesopotamia is heaving with the stuff. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a geyser of it.”

  “I think you might have chosen the wrong line of work,” I mused.

  He shot me a dark look as he tended to Albi, rubbing her down and supplementing her grass with fodder he had brought from Damascus. When we had washed our hands and faces and Sebastian had rigged up a small tent, we made our way to their campsite. They had accomplished a remarkable amount in so short a time. They had pitched tents—three, I was interested to see. Apparently the Johnsons’ marriage was not a demonstrative one. And they had arranged picnic rugs around a merrily crackling fire to make a sort of seating area. A flat rock had been cleared for Rosamund Johnson to use to prepare the food.

  I gave her a quick smile to show my friendliness, but she sized me up coolly. “You don’t look remotely useful in that costume,” she said. “Sit there.”

  She pointed to another rock and I gave no sign of understanding anything she said, only the gesture, which was unmistakable. I seated myself and watched as she expertly mixed up flour and water to make flatbreads and assembled a sort of stew made of meat and spices. She moved with an economical grace, every movement efficient and tidy, her long white hands stirring and shaping and reaching as she worked. She must have been aware of my scrutiny, but she said nothing, merely continued her preparations with the same chilly precision. Her hair was black, but not the flat hennaed black of mine. It was a rich black, glossy as a crow’s feathers, with a blue sheen in the depths, but scraped back into an unflattering style, old-fashioned and heavy, plaited tightly and pinned at the nape of her neck. Her eyes, when they turned on me, were an odd grey, almost silver, and her brows were highly arched and might have been expressive if she had not been so perfectly detached. Her features were lovely, and it occurred to me that she had deliberately downplayed her beauty with her choice of clothing and hairstyle. A little powder and rouge and she would be devastating, I decided, and I wondered whether I should offer her a bit of Sebastian’s kohl as an improvement.

  She finished assembling the food then turned to me, her generous mouth curved into a sweet, sudden smile. She held out a bowl of oranges. “Would you mind carrying these, you stupid whore?”

  I smiled broadly, holding out my hands as her husband came over to where we stood.

  “Well?” It was a single word, but it carried a world of meaning.

  Rosamund Johnson shook her head. “He was telling the truth. She doesn’t understand English.”

  He smiled at me and reached out to take an orange from the bowl. “Excellent. He’s a merchant from Damascus. He and his bride are going to visit family at the seaside. Thought he’d take her the scenic way round,” he told his wife with a lip that curled faintly into a sneer.

  “Quite the honeymoon,” she said lightly.

  “Quite,” he returned. “But better than ours,” he added with a meaningful look.

  She gave him a smile as honeyed as the one she had offered me. “If you attempt to come into my tent again, I will kill you. And I won’t bother to make it look like an accident. If you want my help, get rid of these two in the morning.”

  He gave her a speculative glance. “When you say ‘get rid of—’”

  She made an impatient gesture. “I mean let them leave. They’re no use to us.”

  He held her eyes a long moment then nodded. “As you wish, darling,” he said, drawing out the last word in an exaggerated caress.

  He walked back to where Sebastian stood chatting with Old Lecky. My face hurt from smiling, but my winsome expression hadn’t slipped so much as an inch.

  Rosamund Johnson gave me a cynical look. “Keep smiling, little one. I just saved your life.”

  * * *

  The rest of the evening passed so conventionally, I almost believed I had dreamt the entire conversation. Rosamund was an excellent cook and they were heavily provisioned with everything from tins of French pâté to smoked oysters. We ate heartily before finishing with coffee and oranges, and finally Sebastian, with flowery compliments and much grateful salaaming, said our goodbyes and escorted me to our tent at the edge of the stream.

  He gave me a little push and I collapsed inside the tent, every muscle of my body aching.

  “I would sell you to anyone who offered to take you if I could get a hot bath in exchange,” I told him.

  “If they’d bathe me, too, I’d let you,” he said, falling onto the makeshift pallet with a heavy groan. “Well, I was right about their not being archaeologists. The portly fellow doesn’t even know the word lithic.”

  “I don’t know the word lithic,” I pointed out.

  “It means stone, you poor undereducated ninny. But no one expects you to know. You’re not trying to pass yourself off as a digger-up of priceless antiquities.”

  I propped myself on one elbow to see his face. His eyes were closed and the shadow at his jaw was much darker than it had been that morning. He wouldn’t need to darken it with soot again.

  “I may not be a digger-up of priceless antiquities, but I am a winkler-out of secrets,” I told him.

  He opened one eye. “Even as the mute wife of the merchant Talal?”

  “Oh, is that your name? I don’t like it. Why not Hussein? Or Rashid? I like Rashid.”

  “I noticed,” he said dryly. He closed his eye. “What secrets have you winkled, wife of mine?”

  “I know that the Johnsons are most probably not married. I know he is after something that he can only get with her help. And I know she would love nothing better than to stick a knife in his ribs,” I said pleasantly.

  Both of his eyes flew open. “You’re joking. When did you learn all that?”

  “Right after she called me a whore.”

  He pushed himself to a sitting position, all fatigue quite fled. He was alert and commanding. “Tell me. From the beginning,” he ordered.

  I related the conversation as I had heard it, not omitting my impressions of them, as well. “Old Lecky is a sort of sidekick, I think. Clearly Johnson is driving the whole plot, whatever it is. And she doesn’t like it one bit, but he has a hold over her. I can’t imagine what it is, but it’s left her furiously angry, only she hides it rather well. I’d never have known she was so enraged if she hadn’t had a go at him. But he must need her because he stood for it. That m
eans whatever they’re after is bigger than her anger and his pride.”

  “Something like the Ashkelon hoard,” he said, his face grim.

  I shivered.

  “Goose walk over your grave?” he asked.

  “Something like that. I don’t want to stay here, not now that we know what they’re like.”

  “We don’t know for certain they’re after the treasure. And Mrs. Johnson, if that is her name, has persuaded them we’re harmless. If we leave now, it will make them suspicious. Much better to sit it out and leave at first light as we planned.”

  “They could slit our throats while we sleep!” I protested.

  Sebastian looked affronted. “Do you actually think I’d let that happen?”

  “I don’t think you’d have much choice if you were dead,” I grumbled.

  But I rolled over with my back to him and within moments, I was fast asleep.

  * * *

  The next morning, just before dawn rose over the ridge, Sebastian shoved me awake.

  “You don’t have a knife in your ribs,” he informed me tartly. “I checked. Now get up and look sharp. I want to be out of here.”

  Before I could get my bearings he had disassembled the little tent and packed it swiftly onto Albi’s back. He shoved a handful of dried apricots at me. “Breakfast,” he informed me as he tossed me into the saddle.

  We were gone just as the sun touched the edge of the ridge, chasing the long purple shadows of morning from the meadow. I thought of the guidebooks I had read. “In another month, this whole area will be covered in poppies,” I told him, “a vast carpet of scarlet as far as the eye can see.”

  His only response was a grunt, and I sighed, shoving another apricot into my mouth. I had obviously insulted him by my doubts of the previous night, and Sebastian clearly had a gift for sulking. I entertained myself by peering closely at the Johnsons’ camp as we rode past. The fire had burnt out and it had a cold, shuttered look, and I was glad to put them behind us. The sudden appearance of the sun, warming the stone landscape with its golden-pink light filled me with sudden confidence. I pinned my veil into place, and he touched Albi’s flank, commanding her to move out onto the plateau and down the long dusty track towards the sea.