CHAPTER 67
Water lapped her feet. Gulls shrieked insistently. What was so urgent? Sofia lay there with half her face submerged in water and an overwhelming desire to go back to sleep. The water was tepid and the air was cruelly hot.
Then she distinguished another sound behind the tide: a breathless, huffing laughter. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at a strange feral dog with stripes like a cat. It smelled terrible. It was panting and padding a circle on the sand around her, getting closer with each circuit. It had a thick neck and powerful shoulders, but judging by its poking ribs and the way its long teeth emerged from slaver, it hadn’t eaten for a while. It reacted to her return to consciousness by sinking abruptly on its hunkers and preparing to jump.
Suddenly a stone splashed into the water beside it, then another skimmed its flank. It hopped up indignantly, before bolting away, laughing miserably.
Sofia rolled onto on her back and found a shadow standing over her: a dark-skinned youth, not much more than twenty. His hand rested on the dagger in a broken sheath in his belt. The blade was the only distinguished thing he wore, but his carriage was noble. His face was lean and boyish, though a few curled hairs stood out on his round chin and there was a thin attempt at a moustache under his heavy nose. His thick, expressive brows were ebony-black, like his knotted long hair, which was loosely wrapped in a shawl. Behind him, two dusty camels moaned and butted their massive heads together, making a sound like empty cork.
‘Are you alive?’
Though Sofia was surprised to understand him, she played dead until he took a step towards her. Then she wound her legs around his and twisted, taking him off balance. As soon as he hit the ground he rolled, pulled his dagger free and pressed it – gently – against her neck. All else was hot, but the steel was cold. She flinched from it, amazed that she had been caught – he was fast.
‘So you are alive,’ he said.
‘And you’re a lousy aim.’
‘I wasn’t aiming to kill. It was only being a dog.’ His language was some barbaric variety of Frankish, mixed with an archaic version of the Ariminumese dialect. Sofia was grateful for the smattering of Europan tongues she had picked up during her time in John Acuto’s camp.
‘Where’s Levi?’
‘I’ve seen no other bodies. This Levi, he was your husband?’ His voice was calm and even; if the attack had angered him, his manner did not betray it.
‘A man I was travelling with.’
He slowly took the blade away. ‘Your husband must be a trusting fellow, to let a woman in your condition travel, or a great fool.’
‘I didn’t ask for your opinion, heathen. Is this Oltremare?’
‘Technically, yes. But many parts of Oltremare are not safe for the Franj.’
‘I’m not a Frank.’
‘And I’m not a heathen. I am Ebionite; my name is Arik, son of Uriah.’
She noticed the piercing, restless eyes under the thick brows. They were the eyes of a bird of prey: a light-as-honey brown flecked with amber; little mercy in them perhaps, but no cruelty either. He held himself loose, yet poised and fully present, like other hunters Sofia had known.
‘We were bound for Akka. There was a storm.’
‘Yes, the winds were strange last night. You’ve bypassed Akka by many leagues, but it’s a day’s journey if you go by the coast along the plain of Sharon.’
‘Who is your master?’
‘God is my master, and yours, but I am employed by the Queen of Oltremare. Whom do you serve?’
Sofia looked about at the wreckage – a torn sail, some splintered wood. Had Levi and Ezra washed up on another shore, or been swallowed by the sea? She took the sail and rolled it up. She saw the Ebionite watching her sceptically. She tried to straighten up, but assuming a queenly bearing was difficult in her bedraggled state. ‘I am the Contessa of Rasenna.’
‘I never heard of it.’ He coolly appraised her. ‘Perhaps you’re a runaway slave. I could sell you …’
‘I’m an ambassador of the Etrurian league.’ That was stretching the truth, but she needed to convey that he could get more by ransom than selling her as a slave. ‘I come offering an alliance … Arik.’
He frowned, ‘A tribe’s allies are its neighbours, as are its enemies. You come from Ereb, a land of darkness far from here. Amity or hostility is equally meaningless with countries so far away.’
‘Unless you are the queen’s adviser as well as her slave, I don’t propose to discuss it. You will bring me to her. The queen would not thank you for keeping me waiting.’
‘The queen does not thank anyone. I am not her slave, or yours,’ he said.
Sofia got the impression that Arik was the patient type. She gritted her teeth and tried a smile. ‘I would be most grateful if you would escort me.’
He shrugged in resignation. ‘I am going to Akka. You may come along. If you can ride a horse then you should not have much trouble.’ He led the smaller yellow camel forward and patted its neck with rough affection. ‘This one’s name is Safra; in the past he has displayed great tolerance with idiots.’
He made the camel kneel and showed Sofia how to catch the pommel with one hand and place her knee into the saddle. She tried, unsuccessfully, until the camel started to grumble, then she swore and said, ‘Oh, just give me a leg up!’
He took a step back, keeping both hands at his sides. ‘I cannot. It is forbidden.’
‘I didn’t ask you to make love to me.’
He laughed, but still he would not assist her. Grumbling about his prudery, she finally managed to get her knee into the right place, but as soon as the camel felt her weight, it began rising, hind legs first, and she just managed to throw her other leg over the saddle in time. She held on with difficulty as the jerking pitched her forwards, then back. She watched glumly as Arik simply pulled down his camel’s head and placed a sure foot on its neck. As the camel raised its head again, he slid gracefully into the saddle. Arik led the way, and Sofia noticed that he rode kneeling rather than sitting.
They had gone a while when she spoke. ‘You said Akka was north.’
‘Yes?’
‘We’re going east.’
‘There’s a sizeable band of Sicarii – bandits – somewhere along here. I was tracking them when I happened upon you. Anyone they capture who is not Ebionite they kill.’
Sofia felt a dart of fear for Levi. ‘I can fight,’ she said.
‘That is obvious. Also obvious is that you need rest. I am your escort now, and honour-bound to keep you safe. Our route will be longer, for we must retreat a good distance from the coast before turning north. Then we go through Ephraim and Manasseh and by the Megiddo road into the Jezreel Plain. Hut hut!’
They rode on in silence as the terrain gradually climbed. Sofia experimented with different arrangements of her feet around the hump, finally deciding that all were equally uncomfortable. She had not been ill at sea, but she found herself dizzied and sickened by the rolling gait and the untiring wind.
‘The Sharav comes from the southern deserts,’ Arik remarked. ‘It is the last wind of winter; it blows for sixty days and fills men’s tents with sand and their souls with melancholy.’ From a satchel he dug out two filthy pieces of cotton, the seed-heads still attached. ‘Here. Block your ears from it.’
There were no marks of Man’s living presence in any place they passed, though there were many desolate graveyards half-buried beneath the shifting sands.
‘The earth fills quickly,’ Arik said. ‘The Dead are territorial.’
‘Where are the towns?’
‘Nothing can live out here,’ he said, then corrected himself: ‘There were many towns once, then the Great Drought descended, twenty or more years ago. Jordan ran dry. It hurt the tribes much, the coastal dwellers less so. The desert people were once known for their generosity; the strong clans had good springs and fertile palms, but these exist no longer, and honour too has vanished. Scarcity makes locusts of those who remain.’ The heat went out of his anger and turned to resignation. ‘But God wills it. He punishes with water, by sending too much or by withholding it. Blasphemy to question Him.’
‘Is that who taught you to ration it so stingily?’
He threw her the waterskin. ‘Keep it. I’ve never met one who drank so much.’
Sofia suspected Arik’s casual act was just that; he could not have calculated on taking this long route back to Akka, nor having a companion unused to the desert.
The voracious sun warped the sky as wind disturbs a lake. Its light was like the moon’s, turning all colours bone-white. The heat came in waves that broke over the endless sand ridges. She concentrated on breathing, but the air on her dry lips was pitiless as fire. Etruria was a warm, wet land and its humid air had a palpable weight. Here the absolute lack of moisture made it insubstantial as a fairy feast – you could eat and eat and never be sated.
Arik promised she would grow accustomed to it, as she had already to the brackish water, and so it proved. She learned to pay attention to the little he said – and to what he did. She noticed he let his camel eat the few shrubs they came across, so when her camel started edging towards a small clump of thorny yellow flowers, she did not stop it.
‘Safra, No!’ Arik yelled, and Sofia’s camel turned obediently.
‘That flower is deadly.’
‘It’s the same one you’ve been letting your camel eat!’
‘Not the flower, fool! Look at the air above.’
She did, and saw, many braccia above, yellow petals whirling slowly in the air, apparently drifting freely, but always over the flower – trapped.
‘It’s a zar – a most stupid Jinni that sleeps all day, but deadly to any creature that wakes it. Come away.’
They rode on until the land was spiked with rocky hills, a desiccated version of the rolling contato around Rasenna. To the east, the plain elevated precipitously, and a strange cloud of dust circled its highest point. Inside the distant storm she glimpsed man-made forms: broken buildings, walls, and towers scattered about a truncated mountain. Here Arik turned them north.
‘What’s—?’
‘Nothing to concern you,’ he said, tapping his camel on. ‘Hut, hut.’
Sofia let her mind wander, listening to the metronomic slap of the camels’ feet. If Arik spoke truly, the Great Drought had occurred when Bernoulli loosed the Wave on Rasenna. She was startled out of her ruminations by a sudden cold wind – the day’s heat had abandoned the desert quickly – as the sky flushed purple and the sun turned over like an old man going to sleep.
‘We’ll stop here,’ said Arik, hopping down. ‘In Akka – if you are who you say you are – they’ll give you a bed grand enough for a princess, and your dreams will go no higher than the ceiling. Here, they will reach to the stars.’
‘Huh,’ Sofia said. ‘All I remember from sleeping outdoors is waking with a sore back.’ She urged Safra on. ‘I’ll be back in a moment; I just want a closer look at that cloud.’
In an instant Arik had reached for Safra and grabbed her around the neck. ‘No!’ he cried, then, ‘The place is cursed, understand? Those who go there do not return.’
Arik tied up and watered the camels while Sofia went to find kindling – there was little scrub, but other travellers had stopped here in the past and the old, bleached camel dung left by their beasts was good fuel.
When she returned, she noticed Arik kept his back to the strange spinning cloud. She studied it surreptitiously, as though he had forbidden even sidelong glances.
‘This isn’t what I expected of the Holy Land,’ she said at last.
‘Holy Land,’ Arik repeated wryly as he added some twigs to the fire. From one of his goatskin bags he took a few ounces of flour and a little salt, then added a little water and kneaded the dough before dividing it into several little balls, which he flattened between the palms of his hands. He scooped out a bed in the sand, laid some hot embers in, then put some rocks on top. He place the rounds on the rocks, buried the lot with a thin layer of sand and scattered more embers on top. This done, he rubbed his hands together, looked up and asked, ‘What did you expect?’
There was no simple answer. The names of the mountains and rivers were the prayers of her childhood; in her head it occupied the same mental plane as Purgatory, Heaven and Hell. Just to be here was disorientating. Isabella spoke of a fairy-tale haven, but what a bleak world if this desolate husk was its centre.
Sofia smiled. ‘Milk and honey?’
The Ebionite laughed. ‘Sand and fire, more like. My people came through the desert to get here and now the desert has caught up. I sometimes think the fate of that place will be the fate of my people.’
‘What’s it called?’
He poked the fire critically. ‘Its name is too cursed to say. My father called it The Place where the Jinn Consult.’
His evasions didn’t impress Sofia. ‘It’s a city.’
Arik pulled a stick from the fire and blew upon it. The glow illuminated his face. ‘It was a city, like Iram of the Pillars, like Jericho, like Gomorrah, like Sodom. Wars were fought over such places – and now the desert has taken this one too, and it is welcome to it. You asked its name: once it had a thousand, and the wise men said, “That great number was evidence of its greatness.”’ He cleared the embers, dug up the bread and set it aside to cool. Then he looked over his shoulder at Sofia. ‘One of its names was Jerusalem,’ he spat.
He handed her some bread and she ate in silence. It was warm, and dry as dust. He gave her water, but took none himself. When she protested, he said they would find a well early tomorrow; until then, her need was greater. As Sofia drank, she pretended not to notice the wild dogs that chuckled and nattered in the dusk. They were just out of reach of the fire’s heat, but not of Arik’s sling.
Sofia had not just been searching for kindling; now, with the sail she had rescued from the beach, she set about fashioning a combat banner. As she tested its snap, she wondered about Ezra, and whether he had drowned with Levi.
‘Curious weapon,’ said Arik, breaking into her reverie. ‘Highly impractical, I imagine.’
‘A chivalrous weapon, unlike your sling.’
His hand kept spinning and his eye never left the darkness. ‘Chivalry, yes – Queen Catrina mentions it frequently. It’s another layer of armour for knights. They murder the fellahin freely, but when they are captured they wish to be ransomed. Chivalry doesn’t limit war’s horror; it makes it endemic. Yah!’
Arik made the bravest of the dogs howl with a stone in the haunch. His accuracy in such poor light impressed her, but instead of complimenting him, she complained of riding pains.
Arik chewed a date, grinning. ‘You have not been riding. Safra is carrying you.’
‘Perhaps.’ Sofia laughed and looked though the fire’s dancing flames. The infinite night lay beyond the reach of its light. ‘Do you want it back, Arik?’
‘Jerusalem? Cities have brought only grief to my people. I want for nothing. Sleep well.’
‘Golden dreams.’
They breakfasted on dates and sugared tea. Sofia found the going more comfortable this time. She looked back before the abandoned city was out of sight: dust-devils spun lazily, making slow circles around the outskirts like sentries.
They rode though a steep-sided wadi. Sofia thought it a strange place to look for water: the smooth pebbles underfoot showed that a river had run here once, but there wasn’t a single shrub nor a trace of green now, and jagged rock-salt bled from the dried earth. At the end of the wadi was a boulder. Arik leapt down confidently. ‘There’s a cave here, and a drip at the back known only to my father’s people. You will not like its taste, but it will keep us alive.’
He came out a minute later with his waterskins still empty, looking subdued. As he mounted his camel he said quietly, ‘It was choked with sand. I dug it out, but …’ He was obviously disconcerted. ‘I’ve never known it to run dry.’
Before she could say anything he’d pulled up and was staring westwards. She followed the direction of his eyes. ‘What?’
‘Between those blue mountains. The dust.’
‘Riders?’
‘Five Sicarii, coming fast.’
‘I’m slowing you down,’ Sofia said.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘and even if we could outride them, without water you’ll die. Since you’re a woman there’s a chance – small, admittedly – that they will sell you.’
‘They’ll kill you for certain.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go – leave me.’
‘I cannot.’ He smiled. ‘And even if it were permitted, I would think twice.’
Sofia grinned. ‘I’m ready to fight if you are.’
‘If we must, we must – but we can at least choose better terrain than this.’
They climbed up out of the wadi and dismounted, and watched the men approaching. Arik had been right: there were five of them, and when they saw they were observed, they slowed their pace. At their head was a cheerful-looking villain with curiously white teeth and a long beard knotted with dirt.
‘Shalom,’ he called.
Arik occupied himself straightening his saddle-kit before looking up and saying casually, ‘Aleikhem shalom.’
‘Truly that Queen found a loyal slave in you, Arik Ben Uriah.’
‘I’m no one’s slave,’ said Arik coldly.
‘You are a thorn in your brother’s foot. He yearns to see you again.’ These were the compliments of a butcher praising a calf. He turned to the youngest of the party. ‘Tell Yusuf that we’ve found his dog of a brother, and another Franj.’ Without a word, the boy turned and rode off to the west.
Arik said, ‘Then you found someone else near the wreck on the beach?’
‘He tried running. Not a bad swordsman.’
‘Levi!’ Sofia said, then looked at Arik. ‘What is it?’
The boy had not got far; now he stopped and started warily backing away. As Arik and the Ebionites watched apprehensively, suddenly rider and camel both shot into the air and tumbled there for a few seconds as if weightless before crashing down with a dismal, abruptly terminated roar. A cloud of enraged dust erupted like a swarm of hornets and the Jinni approached at an impossible speed: a tall column trailing a swirling dust-cloud at its base. Arik grabbed his saddle blanket and threw himself over Sofia, shouting, ‘Get down!’
Sofia squirmed under his weight. ‘Get off me!’
‘Be still, woman! I’m trying to save you—’
Daylight ceased and they were enveloped by a throbbing like the collective scream of battle. The sand-laden wind wept and battered against them rhythmically and Sofia gritted her teeth while Arik chanted, ‘No God but God, no God but God, no—’
They heard hoarse screams, and mangled oaths as the howl shattered into shrieks and then – all at once – was gone. Arik moved fast, whipping off the cloak, pushing aside the sand that had almost buried them. It was hard to see; the air was heavy with dust. One of the Sicarii had the same idea, but his legs were buried, and he could not avoid Arik’s dive, or his dagger. The dying man grabbed hold of Arik’s hands.
A second Sicarii, the one with the long beard, was up now. He saw Arik struggling and stepped stealthily over Sofia – who thrust her flag between his legs. He bent over, groaning, and she got to her feet and followed up with an overhead blow to the back of his neck. The sharp crack made Arik turn and he nodded at her. ‘The others? There were five.’
One they found still sitting on his camel, ready to ride. Sand filled his mouth and nostrils, his ears and eyes. The man’s camel opened its eyes and moaned despairingly. It shook the sand from its ears and the body slumped and fell off. ‘He was too slow,’ Arik said dismissively. He scanned the sand carefully, stopped at a slightly raised spot and plunged in his hand. He pulled out a foot. ‘And this one, unlucky. It might have been us, but now, God be praised, we have water.’
Sofia ignored the outstretched waterskin. ‘Let’s get Levi.’
‘Folly. Drink before you collapse. Besides, they will not keep a Frank alive.’
‘But there’s a chance! Your honour wouldn’t let you abandon me, so I cannot abandon a friend I know is alive – do you understand?’
‘Drink,’ he said.
‘Say you’ll help.’
‘You’ve already proven your courage. This is only demonstrating stupidity. Which would you water first, a horse or a camel? You come from a land where water hangs in the air; you’ve been shipwrecked, riding and fighting. Drink … and we shall find your friend.’
Sofia drank. It was warm and briny, but she had never tasted better water. At last she wiped her mouth and gulped air. ‘So let’s go.’