“Good God! But still, if that was fifty years ago and it was the last…it was the last?”
“Of course not. People come to grief in the desert all the time. I was trying to distract you.”
“From what?” I demanded.
But the flap of the tent was flung back and Daoud entered with a cohort of his men. Behind came a pair of others carrying platters with flatbreads, a pungent sort of sour goat’s cheese and a hot, greasy rice dish studded with bits of stewed vegetables. Daoud signalled that we were to help ourselves, and remembering the strictures about eating only with the right hand, we dove into the platters.
Daoud joined us in a gesture that I suspected was intended to allay our discomfort. He was a genial host, telling stories and asking interested questions about my travels prior to coming into the Badiyat ash-Sham. He was particularly taken with the notion that I flew an aeroplane, and I expanded on that until we had eaten and drunk as much as we could. At last the platters were taken away and Daoud summoned a tall contraption I recognised from the shops in Damascus. It was a water pipe, a nargileh, and it had been prepared for him so that all he need do was apply a glowing coal and take several long puffs. When it was going, he offered it to Gabriel, who took a long appreciative drag, then passed it to me.
I pulled hard at the mouthpiece, filling my mouth with the sweetly fruited smoke and holding it there before I blew it out in a slow, steady stream.
Daoud laughed and said something in Arabic.
“He is impressed. Most women don’t handle a pipe that well.”
I smiled. “I learned to smoke from the soldiers I helped nurse at a convalescent home during the war.”
“The Great War?”
I blinked. “Was there another?”
Daoud bared his teeth in a smile that was almost as winsome as it was sinister. “Madame Starke, out here there is always war.”
So we smoked and Daoud listened as I talked of my travels. He was particularly interested in the Seven Seas Tour. We went outside so I could sketch out for him the seas I planned to cross.
“They’re not the modern seven seas, you understand,” I explained as I roughed in the positions. “I chose the seven seas of antiquity. They’re much nearer together, you see, and much smaller.”
He mused over the wide swathes of water I had drawn between the bits of land. “It is too much water. I do not like it.”
“But your own people know the importance of the sea,” I protested. “They took the port of Aqaba from the Turks with the help of Colonel Lawrence.”
He smiled the smile that was nothing like his idiot’s grin. “But the sea is not ours, Madame Starke. We are masters of the desert,” he said, throwing his arms wide.
I turned to look from horizon to horizon, and endless blackness outside the small circle of warm lamplight. It was pierced here and there by the brightness of stars that barely pricked the inky nothingness. “But the desert is a sea,” I told him. “It is vast and relentless and it can take a man’s life with ease. Only the clever and the brave survive.”
No flattery seemed too thick for Daoud. He preened every time I larded a little into the conversation, and by the time we returned to the tent, we were chattering away like old mates. Gabriel sat quietly, his expression alternately bland or sour depending on the topic. Daoud and I ignored him and continued to talk as another nargileh was filled and bowls of dates were carried in.
We nibbled and smoked and the talk turned back to my experiences as a pilot.
“I have seen aeroplanes, of course,” Daoud offered. “They flew over the Badiyat ash-Sham rather more often than one would like.” His expression was pained, and I thought of how terrifying it must have been for people whose lives had carried on largely unaltered through the centuries to have come face-to-face with the horrors of mechanised warfare.
I said as much, and he nodded. He talked then of his village, the settlement far to the south where the women and children lived while the men were out raiding. The village moved, of course, herding their flocks between grazing lands, but the faces and the quarrels and the friendships were unchanged. He told me of a brother lost to the Turks and another lost to an overzealous bit of British artillery.
“But worse than this, Madame Starke, is the war that rages among the Bedu. We cannot agree on what should become of us.”
I nodded. “You know, the nomadic peoples in the United States were much the same as yourselves. They followed herds of animals called buffalo—like enormous cows, really—across great grassy plains and fought among themselves. They couldn’t unite to fight their common enemy, either.”
“And who was their enemy?”
“Well, the white settlers who kept moving westwards. They wanted more land and the native peoples were pushed and squeezed. And then the white people hunted all the buffalo until there were none left to feed the natives.”
“And what became of these natives who were like the Bedu?”
I did not flinch from his clear gaze. “They died. Or were pushed onto foul little bits of land that are no good for farming or grazing. Everything they knew was destroyed.”
He pounded the earth with his fist. “This! This is what I fear if the Bedu do not come together in agreement. The English and the French will break us into pieces because they want the cities or they want the oil fields of Mesopotamia. But what of the people?”
“And what are you doing about it?” I demanded coolly.
He gave me a blank look. “I?”
“Yes, you’re busy trotting around the desert abducting people and planning to steal priceless artefacts. That is why you went to the dig in the first place, isn’t it? You thought if you pretended to be a halfwit and kept your ears and eyes open you’d find something of tremendous value and make off with it. One trinket from a good archaeological find is worth years of desert raiding. It could keep your people comfortably, I quite understand,” I said, holding up a hand as he opened his mouth to protest. “But what good does that do after this year? You cannot repeat the trick. Your description would be circulated among the digs. You’d never be hired again. And then what? You’ve fed your people for another season but no further. And by then the French mandate may have been formalised. They may have established outposts in the desert, rounding up the stragglers and rebels, putting Bedouins to the sword and protecting their own interests. And what will you have done to stop it? Nothing. In fact, you will have given them a perfect excuse with your lawlessness to come out here and interfere. Is that what you want, Daoud? To bring the ire of the French authorities to bear upon your people?”
His mouth hung slack and he darted a look at Gabriel, who was sitting quite still in the shadows. Gabriel said nothing and his expression was carefully neutral.
“Let us go,” I went on. “Set us free, Daoud. We have no quarrel with the Bedu. We want only prosperity and peace for the great warriors of the desert.” I paused to see if I had laid it on too thickly, but Daoud was more susceptible than I thought. “You are the sons of lions,” I said, my voice ringing with conviction. “You are the children of the wind, masters and first-born sons of the Badiyat ash-Sham. You are the true nobility and the greatest part of nobility is mercy. I cast myself upon your goodness, o’ son of the lion, and I ask for your gracious mercy and compassion as a child of Allah, the merciful and compassionate.”
I bowed my head and waited for his gesture of mercy. Instead, there was a hoarse, grating laugh, and Daoud doubled over in mirth. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and when he wiped them away, he said, “Oh, Madame Starke, that was most impressive. And we Arabs are the most sentimental folk in the world. But I am afraid you’re not dealing with an Arab.”
I blinked at him as Gabriel muttered an oath under his breath. “Not an Arab?”
Daoud gave me a thin smile. “Not a full-blooded one at any rate. My father was B
edu, but my mother was French and brought me up to know the ways of her people, as well. So, while I might be a—What did you call it? A ‘son of the lion’? I am gifted with a great deal of very sound Gallic common sense. Mine is a Cartesian brain, Madame.”
I sat back on my heels. “Drat.”
The smile deepened. “Indeed. In fact, it was my experience with the perfidious ways of Europeans which enabled me to understand what the Thurzós were planning. Naturally, they did not think to guard themselves against immoderate speech when they were in the presence of a native with a reputation for idiocy. You’re quite right—it was a most useful pose. Now, I must thank you for the enormously entertaining interlude, Madame Starke, but I think it is time for me to leave you. I would like a little sleep before we set off tomorrow.”
He motioned for two of his men to tie us up—back to back, which was just as well. Gabriel was smirking and I would have struck him if I’d had my hands free. They left us, taking the lamp with them, and when the tent flap dropped, we were in darkness.
“Don’t say it,” I told him, my teeth gritted.
Behind me, I felt his body shaking with silent laughter. I dug my elbow into his ribs, but that didn’t stop him.
“What’s the matter, Evie? I’m sure we’ll get out of this just fine. Why don’t you call on Allah the merciful and compassionate to give us a hand?”
“At least I tried,” I returned hotly. “Some criminal genius you are! You just sat there like a bloody great lump saying nothing and letting me prattle on—” I carried on abusing him for a full minute before I realised he was busy fumbling with our bound hands. “What are you doing?”
“Cutting the ropes,” he replied in a cheerful tone.
“Gabriel! You have a knife? How absolutely brilliant.”
“A moment ago I was a bloody great lump.”
“I don’t remember saying anything of the kind. Oh, do be careful with that thing! You nearly nicked an artery.”
He sighed. “You don’t have arteries there, my daft little duck. Now shut up and let me concentrate. It’s bad enough I can’t see.”
I fell silent as he worked on the ropes, sawing carefully. At last I felt a pop and one of them loosened. But we were still tightly bound, and I realised it was going to take a very long time for Gabriel to free us. I felt my arms begin to shake a little from the strain and the long night without rest. I occupied myself by reciting poetry in my head. “This is the forest primeval,” I thought.
“Are you thinking of ‘Evangeline’?” Gabriel asked suddenly.
“How on earth did you know that?”
I felt him shrug in the darkness. “You always do it when you’re anxious.”
“I forgot I ever told you that. Yes, I was. ‘Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion, List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.’”
Gabriel groaned. “Not aloud, I beg you.”
“It’s a perfectly splendid poem, I’ll have you know.”
“You only think that because your father named you after it, for which I believe he ought to have been horsewhipped. No one should be named after a Longfellow poem.”
“Longfellow was a brilliant poet.”
He snorted. “Brilliant? He was bloody useless, as bad as Wordsworth and his daffodils with all that talk of primeval forests and happy trees. If you want proper poetry, you want Marvell.”
“Marvell? You call that proper poetry? It’s rubbish.” I cudgelled up a few lines from memory. “‘Ye living lamps, by whose dear light the nightingale does sit so late.’ It’s a poem about glowworms, for heaven’s sake. As I said, rubbish.”
“Rubbish, and yet you can recite it,” he countered smugly.
“Because you used to prattle on about them until I wanted to scream blue murder,” I told him. “And I never understood how someone with such a keen appreciation of baroque music could find pleasure in the foulness of Donne. He wrote a poem romanticising a flea.”
“It was a metaphor.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but suddenly he gave a heave and the ropes snapped free.
“Done,” he said with a darkly satisfied note.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
If I could have seen him clearly, I would have punched him. “What do you mean we wait? We’re free!”
“Not so loud unless you’d like Daoud and his chums to come back and take care of that,” he hissed. “I’ve got us free, but they’ve only just turned in. We need to give them a chance to nod off properly before we try to get out of here. Stretch your legs a bit, but don’t make any noise. I’m going to see if I can loosen a tent peg on the backside for us to slip out.”
I did as he instructed, moving my legs and arms to get the blood moving freely again. I felt surprisingly exhilarated in spite of my exhaustion. A good sparring match with Gabriel had always had that effect, I reminded myself. Although why he should pick a fight over something as stupid as poetry at just that moment…
After a long while he slid back to my side. “I’ve loosened enough we should be able to slip under. There’s a guard, but he doesn’t seem much interested in actually guarding anything. He keeps wandering off.”
“How long do you intend to wait?”
“I’ll let you know,” he said shortly. I huffed a sigh and began to recite Evangeline again in my head. I had reached a particularly poignant line—“So came the autumn, and passed, and the winter—yet Gabriel came not”—when I had had about as much as I could stand. I got up and went to where Gabriel had loosened the tent pegs. Without so much as a “by-your-leave” I lifted the tent fabric a few inches, peered into the starry darkness and rolled myself out into the cold air of freedom. Gabriel was right behind me, not swearing because neither of us dared to speak, but I could feel the rage vibrating in him as we scurried through the sand and over the little rise behind the tents. We gained it without incident, and then the next, and finally, when we were some distance away and well out of sight, he turned on me.
“That was the bloody stupidest thing—” he began. He was raging quietly, for sound carried easily in the desert at night, but I knew he was building up a good head of steam and I flapped a hand at him.
“Gabriel, hush. It’s done and fussing at me isn’t going to change that. And if you thought it was such a poor idea, you didn’t have to follow me, you know.”
“What was I going to do? Let you stumble around the desert on your own and get killed for your pains? Or worse, let them take their fury at you out on me?” How he managed to sound injured when I had just effected an escape eluded me.
“I think I just got us out of a rather sticky situation, so let’s not get too high and mighty about my helplessness, shall we?”
“Then would you like me to keep quiet about the fact that you’re heading the wrong way?” His tone was icily polite, which, frankly speaking, wasn’t much of an improvement on his raging, but I’d take what I could get.
I followed meekly as he turned us northeast and began to trot. We covered some ground before he stopped with a groan. “This is damned pointless. We ought to just go back to Daoud.”
I shook my head as if to clear it. “I’m afraid the desert air seems to have damaged my hearing. I thought I heard you suggest going back to Daoud.”
He sighed, and for the first time in our little adventure, he looked defeated. The posing and posturing was gone, and the expression in his eyes was solemn. “Evie, we’re a good forty miles from Palmyra and we’ve no water. We’re in a part of the desert I’m not particularly familiar with. We’ve got Countess Thurzó running off with the Cross, we’ve got Herr Doktor skulking around for God only knows what reason, we’ve got D
aoud, who will, I hope you realise, be after our heads once he finds us missing.”
“All the more reason to move quickly,” I said.
He opened his mouth then snapped it shut again. He lowered his head a moment, and when he lifted it, his mask of insouciance was firmly back in place. He drew himself up as if steeling himself for an ordeal.
“Come on, then,” he said briskly. “First one to water gets the cleanest drink.”
As we walked, we speculated on the whereabouts of Countess Thurzó and the Cross. “She ought to be in Damascus by now enjoying a hot bath and a nice meal,” I said, feeling my stomach rumble at the thought of a nice savoury steak.
“Perhaps,” he said, drawing out the word slowly.
I stared at him. “What are you thinking? Why on earth would she hang around the desert when she has the Cross?”
He shrugged, his expression evasive. “I don’t know. She could have a buyer here in the Badiyat ash-Sham.”
I considered this. It was vaguely possible, I supposed. There was money in some of the desert tribes. Some of them, like Daoud’s people, were poor as church mice. Others were rumoured to be quite prosperous—usually through charging enormous fees to safely escort trading caravans and travellers through the desert.
“But who?” I asked.
He stroked his thick grimy beard. “I can think of a few Bedouin who would be absolutely delighted to hang one of Saladin’s trophies on the walls of a city house and who have the funds to pay through the nose for it.”
“City house?”
“The richest Bedu have houses in Damascus. Some of them split their time between the city and the desert. Best of both worlds, really.”
“Like Jane Digby,” I mused. The lady’s romantic amours had scandalised Europe for the better part of the nineteenth century. A daughter of one of England’s oldest families, she had taken to the Continent when she fell pregnant with her lover’s child, and a series of mésalliances had followed. She’d had a string of noteworthy lovers, from rebel lords to crowned heads, but the most notorious had been her Bedouin prince, her last husband and by all accounts the love of her life. She’d happily spent almost thirty years dividing her time between their Damascene mansion and his desert tribe. In the city life was not terribly dissimilar to the one she’d known back in England with social calls and entertaining and shopping taking up much of her time, but the rest was wild desert raids and modest warfare, where she was often to be found riding her Arabian mount and handling a rifle as competently as any man. I was just imagining myself astride a horse, leading a charge with rifle blazing, when Gabriel’s voice cut into my reverie.
City of Jasmine Series, Book 2 Page 16