“We’ll be there soon.”
Emily shot up in her saddle. André smiled. “You’re not accustomed to riding all day, are you? It won’t be long now before we reach the Oued Zeltene tributary and, from there, we’ll be home in half an hour.”
Home, Emily mused. Mogador has always been my home until now. “It’s getting dark,” she said. “What if we get lost?”
“Don’t worry. There is a full moon and I know every rock around. I could find my way from here blindfolded. Look, the evening star has risen.”
Emily looked up into the lavender sky and saw a single bright star over the jagged mountaintops.
It had been a pleasant day for riding. At one point, a light rain had fallen, leaving the air mild and soft like balsam. Next to them, the Oued Igrounzar gurgled over the rocks. They heard some rustling in the shrubs and a nocturnal bird called out from a jujube tree. Emily’s horse snorted. She patted it on the neck and listened to the rhythmic clip clop of the hooves on the hard soil. Her heart beat faster as she thought about the people at Qasr el Bahia, her father’s family, who were now her family.
“Father?” It was difficult for her to address the man who had so long been “Monsieur Rouston.”
“Yes, ma petite?” He turned to her in his saddle.
“Does your family know about me?”
During their journey, André had told Emily about his family, that his wife, Aynur, was a Berber from the Glaoua tribe and that they had four children. The eldest was almost as old as Emily and was named Malika. Her name meant “angel” in Arabic, but André insisted that there was nothing angelic about her and that she was full of mischief. His three sons, Frédéric, Christian, and André, who was called André Jr., had been given names from their father’s country according to Aynur’s wishes. They were seventeen, fourteen, and ten years of age. There had also been two other girls who had died in infancy.
André considered his answer carefully since he did not want Emily to misunderstand. “My family does not know about you,” he eventually admitted. “But that is only because, until just a few days ago, I could not be sure you were my daughter.”
“I simply can’t believe that Mother lied to us for so many years!” Emily said.
He looked at her very seriously. “She had your well-being in mind. You must not judge her so.”
By now, it was almost completely dark. The bright moon was huge and seemed close enough to touch. The wind carried the scent of cedar down from the Atlas. Emily thought she could see shadows scurrying through the thicket. An owl silently glided directly over their heads and her horse reared back.
“You don’t suppose there could be robbers here, do you?” she inquired apprehensively once she had calmed the horse down. The traders from Mogador relied on heavily armed mercenaries from the sultan’s Black Guards to protect their caravans. But Emily and André had no such protection.
“There are no robbers here. We’re too far from the caravan route,” André reassured her. “And I get along well with the Ait Zelten that live here. In fact, many of them work on my estate.”
During his early years at Qasr el Bahia, the Ait Zelten had not been disposed kindly toward him. The shepherds had driven their flocks across his fields, their goats and sheep grazing on his barley and trampling the saffron crocuses. At night, the people had stolen the fruit off his trees and tried to break into his stables and storerooms. It was not until his friend Udad bin Aziki had arrived with two dozen well-armed Chiadma that the Ait Zelten had conceded defeat and their sheikh had accepted the foreigner.
They had become good neighbors over the years. During times of drought and famine, when they lost the greater part of their crop, André shared his food reserves with them. In return, they helped out in the fields and on the farm. A handful of young men objected to the unholy friendship with the infidel, but as long as the sheikh and the rest of the tribe stood by André, they were powerless to do anything about it.
Emily listened intently. The rushing of the water seemed louder than before. “Have we reached the Oued Zeltene?”
Her father nodded. “Qasr el Bahia is directly in front of us.”
She followed his extended arm and beheld the elevated estate. A gigantic, angular building with two massive towers arose dark and majestic before her. Tiny stars sparkled above it in the infinite blue-velvet sky. Suddenly, lights began to glow in one of the two towers, swung several times from right to left, and disappeared. André turned to his daughter. “Those are flare signals. They have heard us arrive.”
Soon after, the lights appeared again, dancing through the darkness in the direction of the two riders. Deliberately placing one hoof in front of the other, the horses and the pack donkey climbed toward them. Water could be heard running underneath them in the rhetaras leading to the terraced fields on either side of the narrow path. In the pale light of the moon, Emily could make out the round-edged stone walls bordering the fields in which one could still see the headless stalks of harvested saffron plants. In between, about a horse’s length apart, were rows of pomegranate trees, the branches of which looked like thin little black arms reaching upward.
Emily heard the torchbearers calling out to them. She was about to meet her new family.
“Will your wife welcome me, Father?” she asked him, her heart in her throat.
André hesitated. He had been preoccupied with this question ever since Emily had told him that she wanted to live with him. He feared that Aynur would not exactly welcome Emily with open arms, but he did not want his daughter to know that.
Aynur was jealous. She did not like it when he went to Mogador. Whenever he returned, she would be distant and unapproachable, making him court her anew and prove that he loved her and not the Engliziya to whom he sold his saffron.
What would happen when he rode into the courtyard with his and Sibylla’s daughter? He would protect Emily and make it clear to Aynur that she must respect this child of his as well, but it would not be easy.
“My life has taught me not to make grand plans. Most of the time, fate decides,” he said as airily as possible.
“So you’ll let fate decide how I am received?”
“Not entirely, because I am by your side.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Inshallah, my daughter.”
“Inshallah, Father,” she muttered without much conviction.
“Baba?” The voice of a young man came through the darkness. “Who are you talking to?”
The torchbearers were approaching. Emily looked expectantly at the dark-haired young man who came jumping down the hill with the agility of a mountain goat. One of André’s sons, probably Frédéric. He was followed by two farmhands, also bearing torches. Emily tightened her grip on the reins. In Mogador, she had asserted herself against two older brothers. She would have to do that and more with three younger brothers, one sister, and their mother!