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“If they’d seen you they could have caught up with you, on horseback,” someone said. “They must not have seen you.”
Zara said nothing, got up and wandered over to the fridge to get a cold drink, then leaned against it, drinking and staring out over the site, leaving the rest of the team to talk over this latest development.
She was amazingly lucky to be on this dig, which was now certain to make archaeological history. The fourth- and third-century B.C. city called Iskandiyar had been mentioned by several classical authors. Its whereabouts had puzzled modern archaeologists, though, because it was described as being on the banks of the river which now bore the name Sa’adat, Happiness. For more than a century travellers had searched in vain for some sign of it. Such an important city should have left extensive ruins.
Some had even suggested that the classical writers were confused, or inaccurate . . . but Gordon had never doubted them. Gordon had researched Iskandiyar throughout his career, and one day had stumbled on a much later reference to the fact that, “in her lifetime Queen Halimah of Barakat built bridges and tunnels and many public buildings. She changed the course of rivers, even the mighty River Sa’adat, when it suited her...”
That was the clue he needed. If the course of the river had been changed eighteen hundred years after the city had been built, then it followed that the city’s ruins would no longer be on the banks of the river.
By good luck and good timing, Zara was taking Gordon’s classes during the time that he found a possible site in the desert south of the river, and by even better chance she had graduated by the time his funding was in place. And best of all, he had offered her a place on the team.
Until they had uncovered the massive marble lion from the sands of time, there could be certainty only in their hearts. But the classical authors had described Iskandiyar’s “Lion Gates,” and now it was proven almost beyond doubt. This was a city founded by Alexander the Great on his victorious Eastern march more than two thousand, three hundred years ago. Not long after his conquest here, he would weep because there were no more worlds to conquer.
And now here she was, finding history and making it at the same time Zara gazed out at the white pillars that shone so harshly in the fierce sun. She wondered sometimes about Alexander’s tears on that occasion. Had there been a hollow inside him that he could ignore as long as he kept on the move, kept fighting, kept conquering all he met and saw? Was it a lack in his own life rather than the lack of new worlds that had made him weep?
Zara wasn’t thirty-three, the age by which Alexander had conquered the then known world, and although to be associated with such exciting success was a wonderful piece of luck for someone so young, she still had plenty of worlds left to conquer. But sometimes she had the urge to weep, because in unguarded moments her life seemed empty. She didn’t understand why. It was as if she had a voice inside telling her she had missed something, had left something out, as though there was something else she should have done or be doing.
She loved her work. She had always loved history, right from the moment she had understood what history was. She enjoyed the mental exercise of trying to understand old ways, the things that had motivated cultures long disappeared. As a child she had been taken on a class field trip to a new archaeological dig on a site in downtown Toronto, and she could still remember her thrilled amazement when she realized that history could be touched, smelt, dug up out of the ground. From that moment she had known what she wanted to do with her life.
Nothing at all stood in her way. She got the marks, she was accepted at the University of Toronto, and Gordon had recognized her commitment and taken her under his wing, as he had several promising students before her, who now had reputations of their own in the field. She couldn’t have asked for a better start to her professional career than to work under a man of Gordon’s calibre on a find of such importance.
Her personal life was comfortable. She had had an easy, fairly happy childhood, and had come through the teenage years with only a couple of years of tears and slamming doors and impossible parents before things had righted themselves. Zara dated only casually, and kept things light. Of course one day she hoped to fall in love, but she was in no hurry.
And yet . . . like Alexander, she wanted to weep.
Why? What was missing from her life? What did she want?
For no reason at all, she was suddenly remembering the piercing eyes of the bandit chief as he stared at her on that morning a few days before. There had been another world in his eyes, a world far from her own neat, comfortable existence. That dark, hungry gaze had promised her a passion, a way of living she had never even dreamed of... till now.
For a moment she thought of what it would have meant if he had come after her... swung her up on his horse and ridden away with her. They said he might try to take a hostage, but he had not looked at her like a man who sees a potential hostage. Zara shivered at the memory of how he had looked at her.
She had run harder, faster than she had ever run in her life to escape him. Her heart had never beaten so hard. She closed her eyes, shutting out the glare of the sun on the desert, but the bandit’s eyes were still with her.
Two
The preparations at the sheikh’s tent went on all afternoon. Helicopters flew in, disgorging lines of people carrying food and supplies, and took them away again; men came and went in Jeeps and on horseback. Except for a moment when it seemed as if the half-erected tent would blow away in a sudden breeze, no shouting was heard, there was no running. Everything was done with an orderly calm and neatness that, as Lena said, made the archaeological team feel “sort of like a low-budget film.”
One thing the women were all agreed upon, and that was the necessity of dressing in their best for the feast. By common consent everyone downed tools early to take time to prepare. One of the volunteers produced an iron and asked if she could plug it into the generator lead. The other women fell on this with cries of delight.
“How wonderful! Whatever made you think of it, Jess?”
“I didn’t. My mom packed for me. I told her I’d never use it, but she insisted.”
“I kiss your mother. Please thank her from all of us in your next letter!”
“I don’t have an ironing board, though.”
“A towel! All we need is a towel on one of the tables...”
The men went away scratching their heads.
There were lineups for the shower and for the iron, and a lot of excited repartee as people dashed to and fro. Fortunately nearly everyone had something suitable to wear, since everyone had expected to be sampling the city nightlife of the Barakat Emirates some time or other during their stay. But some—the lucky ones—had what Gordon called “the full monty.” Including Gordon himself, who stunned everyone when he appeared just before time in white tie and tails and polished shoes.
“Can’t let the side down,” he said by way of explanation when the others fell back in amazement at this vision of British Establishment eccentricity.
“Gee, Gordon,” Lena said in stunned tones, “it’s just like one of those films—you wearing all that in the desert and all.”
Blonde Lena herself got the prize for feminine magnificence in a low-cut, blush pink dress under a matching gauzy pink georgette coat embroidered in the Eastern fashion with lots of silver thread.
But it was Zara who really stopped them in their tracks. Small and slender, wearing a beautifully simple, high-necked, long-sleeved white dress in heavy raw silk that hung straight and smooth to her bare brown feet in delicate gold sandals, her curling cloak of hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back, one gold bangle at her wrist, she was a vision. Lena eyed her with mock dismay.
“I dunno, you kinda make me feel overdone,” she observed plaintively. But a chorus of voices assured her that many men preferred the obvious, and large numbers of those who did were Oriental potentates.
“And me,” said one male voice. Greg moved to her side and mock-ferociously put an arm around her, leering down into her cleavage. “Any Oriental potentate is going to have to get past me first.”
“That’ll take about a minute,” another man observed.
Lena giggled and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Greg, as if I’d look at you if the prince wanted me!”
“Right, are we all here?” said Gordon’s dry voice above the nervous, excited banter. “Before we start, may I just remind you all that we will very likely be sitting on cushions on the floor, and that it is considered rude in this part of the world to direct the soles of your feet at anyone. So don’t think you can lie stretched out with your ankles crossed and feet pointing towards the prince. You sit with your feet tucked under you, one way or another. In addition—” He gave them several more pointers and then consulted his watch and said, “Right. Time we were off.”
And in a column of twos and threes they left the dining enclosure and began to move across the sand in the direction of what they were still laugingly calling the sultan’s tent.
They had barely set out when they saw lights, and a moment later they were greeted by a party of servants with flaming torches and a man dressed in peacock blue magnificence who bowed and introduced himself as Arif ur-Rashid, Cup Companion to the Prince.
“Very flattering,” Gordon muttered into Zara’s ear. “By tradition the further the king or his emissary comes to meet his guests, the higher the honour. We’ve been met effectively at our own doorstep. Very nice indeed I think we can look forward to a substantial feast. Pearls in the bottom of our wine goblets and told to keep them sort of thing.”
Zara gurgled into laughter. She was one of the few who recognized when Gordon was joking, and his eyes glinted approvingly down at her.
But it wasn’t quite so much of a joke as he had imagined. All the archaeological team gasped with awe when they passed through the doors into the tent.
It was like entering Aladdin’s cave. Everything glowed with richness and warmth. The colours were deep and luxurious—emerald, ruby, sapphire, turquoise. Every inch of walls, floor and ceiling was hung and draped with carpets, tapestries, or beautifully dyed cloth, and the furniture—of walnut, mahogany and other unknown, fabulously grained woods—had such a deep polish it seemed as if it would shine “even if no fire touched it ”
All the light came from naked flame, or flame under delicately painted or cut crystal globes that sent light shimmering around the room like a thousand flung diamonds. And all around them were handsome men in exotic dress introducing themselves as the Cup Companions of the prince. The team felt as if they had stepped back centuries in time, straight into the pages of the Arabian Nights.
One of the Companions had visited the dig earlier in the afternoon, and had been introduced to every member of the team by Gordon, and now they were all greeted by name. For several minutes they made conversation.
Then the heavy sound of a helicopter was heard close by. There was an expectant pause, during which the team found it impossible to chat normally. All of them were surreptitiously watching the entrance. Suddenly a group of men erupted into the room, talking and laughing, and bringing a vital and very appealing energy with them. As one man, the Companions in the room turned and bowed.
The new arrivals were all just as exotically and colourfully dressed as the Companions, and the brilliance of the prince himself was breathtakingly unmistakable.
His long, high-necked jacket was cream silk and seemed to be studded with pinpoints of green light from elbow to wrist and around the collar. His flowing Eastern trousers were deep green. Diagonally across his breast he wore a cloth-of-gold sash, and a double rope of absolutely magnificent pearls at least a yard long was looped and draped over his chest, and fixed at one shoulder with a ruby the size of an egg. He had a lustrous black moustache and thick, waving black hair, which, like the heads of all his Companions, was bare. His fingers were clustered with a king’s ransom in gold and stones.
He put up one arrogant hand in a gesture that in any other man would look, Zara thought, ridiculously theatrical, but in him seemed perfectly natural and engaging. Smiling broadly, he recited something in Arabic, and then said in English, “It is very kind of you all to come to my poor table. May so propitious an occasion be blessed.”
The efforts of the team to think of some suitable response would have made Zara laugh if she hadn’t been similarly dumbstruck herself.
Prince Rafi recognized Gordon in the throng and strode to his side to greet the director, where Arif joined him. The prince chatted briefly to Gordon and then Arif introduced Maeve, then followed the prince slowly through the room, introducing him to each member of the team. The prince tilted his head solicitously to each and shook their hands, exchanging a few words before moving on.
He made his way around the room and at last appeared at Zara’s side. Now she was aware of two things not quite so obvious from a distance—a heady yet elusive scent of sandalwood or myrrh or something similar, and the powerful physical aura of the man. He was not tall, but he exuded power.
“Miss Zara Blake, Your Highness,” said Arif, and a well-shaped, graceful hand was extended to her. Aware that she was blushing, Zara flicked her eyes to his face as she put her hand into his. “Miss Blake, His Serene Highness Sayed Hajji Rafi Jehangir ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi.”
The name rolled off his tongue like poetry.
“Miss Blake, it is a very great pleasure,” said the prince in a tiger’s fur voice, with such emphasis she almost believed him.
“How do you do, Your Highness,” Zara murmured, finding that, whatever her democratic principles, her head seemed to bow of its own accord. Dimly she supposed that was the definition of true royalty—when you couldn’t help bowing.
“I hope your stay in my country will be long and fruitful,” he said.
Zara looked up again, but found that she could not meet his dark eyes for long. She blushed even more warmly, though she had hardly blushed in her life. “Your Highness is very kind,” she murmured.
She expected him to move on then—he had only exchanged a few words with each of the others—but to her surprise he asked, “Your name is Zara?” He pronounced it with a little explosion of air on the first vowel. Zahra.
“Yes.”
“This is a very beautiful name. In my language it means both flower and splendour, beauty.” Without saying it, he managed to imply that she was well named.
“Ah . . . oh.”
“Are your parents perhaps Arabic speakers?”
“No . . . my father’s background is French and my mother—” she shrugged and tried to smile “—just plain Canadian. Sort of mixed.”
Zara was amazed to find herself so stumbling and confused. It was not at all like her, and she was furious with herself. He was a prince only by the luck of birth, and his compliments were no more significant than anyone else’s! There was no reason to start blushing like a fifteen-yearold. A glance around the room showed her that the others had noticed his interest. Passionately she wished he would move on to the next team member.
He did not. She looked at him again in time to intercept the tiniest flick of his long black lashes to Arif ur-Rashid.
The Companion nodded, raised his mellifluous voice slightly for attention, and said, “Here in Barakat, ladies and gentlemen, we do not follow the Western custom of preliminary drinks and hors d’oeuvres while standing. You are invited now to sit at the prince’s table.”
The wall behind Zara suddenly opened, and only then did she notice the big wooden arch she had been standing in front of, revealed as a doorway as servants lifted the heavy draperies that had closed it.
Prince Rafi lifted his arm. “Allow me to escort you, Zara.”
At the sound of her name on his lips, Zara stiffened a little. Okay, this had gone far enough, and it was going to stop right here, before she found herself ensconced in the harem.
“Thank you, Rafi,” she said coolly, and put her hand on his arm.
He smiled into her eyes and drooped his eyelids with pleasure, tilting his head in acknowledgement. Zara gasped a little. She was a fool to play games in so different a culture. She had no idea what message she had just sent him. For all she knew she had already said yes to a postprandial romp.
And, she recollected somewhat belatedly, she had more than herself to think of. The whole future of the dig was under this man’s sole sway. He could wave one graceful, masculine hand and the desert would be clear of them tomorrow.
The archaeological team filed after them through the arched doorway and into the dining room, where they stopped amazed, cries of astonishment soft on their lips, and feeling just a little, Zara thought, like barbarians seeing civilisation for the first time. Among them, the Companions moved with polished grace, inviting them individually to sit.
Prince Rafi led her all the length of the room while Zara gazed in unaffected delight at the spectacle before them. Dozens—hundreds!—of multicoloured silk and tapestry cushions lay massed around the long, low rectangular table that stood about six mches off the ground. It shone with cut crystal and painted porcelain, silver and old gold. Down the centre of the table and all around the walls could be seen the flicker of numerous flames under the most artistically painted glass globes. Against one wall there was a large fountain—she couldn’t believe it, but it was a real marble fountain, and the sound of the softly splashing water was better than music. All along the opposite wall, panels had been rolled up to allow the gentle night breeze to cool them, and the moon and the stars and the desert to form part of the decor. Zara had never seen anything to equal it in her life.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said quietly, and Prince Rafi smiled.
“I am very happy to please you, Zara.” He led her to the farther end of the table. The smell of cooking food rose deliciously on the air.
Prince Rafi stopped and guided her to a place. He stood beside her, and with a curious sinking elation she understood that she had been chosen to sit beside him during the meal. A Companion was on his other side, and next to the Companion was Gordon. All around, the others were finding their places, and in a moment it became clear that every second or third place was taken by one of the Cup Companions.
Prince Rafi raised his arms and gestured them to sit. Zara settled herself among the most comfortable cushions she had ever sat on in her life, and tucked her feet neatly beside her. She turned to find that Arif ur-Rashid was on her other side.
Music started playing. Several musicians with stringed and other instruments—some of which she had never seen before—had come in and settled in a corner and were playing a soft accompaniment to the coming meal.
Arif clapped his hands, and a small army of white-clad boys and girls appeared, each boy carrying a pitcher, each girl a basin, all in silver chased with gold. They approached the table and knelt by the diners. One girl knelt between Prince Rafi and Zara, and, balancing the basin on her knee, offered the prince a bar of soap. He spoke a few gentle words, and she blushed and turned to Zara, offering her the bar. Grateful that Gordon had warned them of the ritual, she took the offered bar and washed her hands lightly under the flow of water that the boy produced from the pitcher.
When Zara had finished, the girl reached to take the soap from her, but her hand fell back as Prince Rafi’s own hand stretched across the basin. Her heart beating hard with unaccustomed confusion, Zara slipped the perfumed soap into his hand. His dark hand closed firmly on the slender white bar, and Zara’s mouth opened, gasping for more oxygen than seemed to be available. She watched transfixed as he stroked the bar of soap into a lather between his hands, then, as if without volition, felt her gaze drawn upwards to his face.
He was watching her, a half smile in his dark eyes. Slowly, lazily, he set the soap in the basin and held his hands under the stream the boy carefully poured. The scent of rosewater mingled with the other subtle scents assailing her nostrils.
“The towel is offered you, Miss Blake,” said the prince, and she blinked and smiled at the worried girl who was holding the soft oblong of fabric up for her.
“Thank you,” she said. She dried her hands and watched as the prince did the same. Then the boy and girl moved away to join the phalanx of water bearers, who all bowed and then filed neatly out of the room.
Almost immediately another group of servants filed in, bringing with them this time the welcome, delicious odour of food. Within the next few minutes a feast appeared. Some dishes were placed on the table, some were carried around and offered to the guests. The beautiful silver and gold goblets were filled with water and wine and exotic juices.
After the bustle had died down, Prince Rafi lifted his gold cup. “I extend to all members of the archaeological team my congratulations on the important historical site which you have discovered and will no doubt in the years to come excavate, to enrich the knowledge of my country’s and the world’s ancient history. In particular, I commend Mr. Gordon Rhett, whom I know well from those occasions when he visited and wrote to me in his enthusiasm for this project.”
He turned and saluted Gordon with his glass, and everybody drank.
“But now is not the time for speeches. The pleasures of the mind are offered when the pleasures of the flesh have been satisfied.” He invited them all to eat and drink, but Zara could hardly take in the words. When he said those words, “the pleasures of the flesh,” it was as if his body sparked with electricity so strong she received a shock from it. She was covered in gooseflesh.
She thought, I’m helpless already. If he really does want me, I won’t be able to refuse.
Three
It became clearer and clearer as the evening wore on that Prince Rafi had eyes only for Zara. Whether he was speaking to the whole room, or to an individual, or listening or silent, there was a kind of glow around the two, apparent to almost everyone in the room. Several times, as if hardly realizing it, the prince would break off what he was saying to lean over and encourage Zara to try the most delicious tidbit on the platter that was being offered, or to signal the cupbearers to refill her glass, or to ask her with an intimate smile whether she liked some flavour.
When the whole roast sheep came in, he regaled them all with the story of the time his father had, according to custom, made the grand gesture of giving one of the sheep’s eyes to his most honoured guest—the British Ambassador. He mimicked the British Ambassador’s false expressions of gratitude.
He was a magical storyteller, with the knack of making people laugh. “Did he have to eat it in front of everyone?” Zara asked.
Prince Rafi turned lazily approving eyes upon her, which shocked her system as if with an unexpected touch. “My stepmother, my father’s first and most beloved wife, was then a new bride. She was sitting on the other side of the Ambassador. Just after the sheep’s eye was served to him, my stepmother had the misfortune to knock over her water glass. The ambassador certainly put something into his mouth and ate it with great enjoyment. But it was rumoured that my stepmother afterwards berated my father and made him swear never again to offer sheep’s eyes to a foreign guest.”
They were all laughing. Rafi watched in admiration how Zara’s neck arched, her eyes brimming over with mischief and merriment, her black lustrous curls falling just so with the tilt of her elegant head.
“My stepmother was a foreigner herself,” he said then. “She understood the ways of foreigners, and she gave my father much good advice. She was of great assistance to him in his rule. He always said so.” He paused. “They were much in love, all their lives.”
He said this gazing right at Zara. The laughter died in her, and heat crept visibly up her cheeks. She was beginning to be a little angry now. Making eyes at her was one thing. This was getting ridiculous. She was starting to feel like an idiot.
She returned his look coolly. “It didn’t stop him taking other wives, though, did it? She was not, after all, your own mother.”
Instead of chilling him, this comment had the effect of making his eyes spark with interest, as if she had betrayed jealousy and he counted that a point in his favour. “Ah, you do not know my father’s tragic story!” Rafi exclaimed, He looked around at the musicians. “Where is Motreb? Ask him to come forth.”
A man in curious dress entered carrying yet another unfamiliar stringed instrument not unlike a banjo. “Motreb, I ask you to sing for my friends the song of my father’s love,” cried Prince Rafi.
