Beneath a Burning Sky

by Jenny Ashcroft

  If Jahi was here, Nailah might have asked him. But he’d left already. He hadn’t even seen Nailah in; he couldn’t wait to be away from her. He’d simply hammered on the servants’ door, bade her a hurried goodbye, then swung back onto his borrowed camel and ridden off. He hadn’t told Nailah where for, only that he’d go to the oasis later, once he was sure it was all done, and help Hassan with Ma’am Sheldon’s body. He had no stomach to witness the murder itself. Suddenly, the image of it filled Nailah’s mind: Hassan taking aim in the darkness, Ma’am Sheldon folding over, sinking into her own silk skirts. It stole Nailah’s breath. She held her hand to her chest, fighting for air, and her mind filled with other pictures: Babu cradled in Cleo’s arms on the floor of the station, waiting for the train; Isa pacing the platform in her fading muslin, berating Jahi for stealing Nailah away, not letting them say goodbye. Kafele, amber eyes bewildered as he tried to find out where Nailah was.

  She saw the captain, the pain distorting his handsome features when he discovered Ma’am Sheldon’s disappearance, the wiping away of her smile.

  Another smile.

  Nailah went over to the mattress and picked up her new clothes. She ran the silk through her hands, as fine as any Ma’am Amélie had ever owned. She would wear them once – tonight. She would bathe, oil her hair, and let them all think she was happy to stay.

  But then, somehow, she would escape. She was sickened at her own cowardice all these long weeks, for not calling out to Ma’am Carter earlier; she hoped she wouldn’t be too late to help Ma’am Sheldon now. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, only that she had to find a way. She had nothing left to lose. And she’d let so much that was evil happen.

  It was time to make amends.

  For all the luxury of the women’s quarters, the embroidered cushions, gold-leaf mirrors and lamps, there was only one external door, and when Nailah drifted past it, trying the handle, she found it locked. She cursed, eyeing the women nearby to make sure they hadn’t noticed her attempt to leave. They appeared oblivious, lost in their chatter, their fingers aflutter as they talked; birds all of them, fine in their feathers, but trapped in a gilded cage.

  ‘Almost sleep time,’ said one of them with a coy laugh.

  Nailah’s stomach flipped, half with disgust, half shameful curiosity. It was as though these women craved Shahid’s attention. Nailah could feel his presence everywhere, unseen, unheard, yet alive in the air of expectation tightening minute by minute. She imagined an elegant man in his forties, assured and strong, with that streak of steel that enabled him to rebel and survive. What would it feel like to be looked after by such a man? To give yourself over to his protection, safe and blameless, a servant of his goddesses?

  Nailah shook her head at the temptation, so hard that a couple of the women glanced at her strangely, said something to each other, and laughed.

  Nailah ignored them. She looked around for another door, a hint of a way to escape. She pictured the vastness of the desert outside, the endless dirt track along which Jahi’s camel had run to bring her here. Even if she got out of the compound, she could well die before she reached the city.

  Like Ma’am Gray must have.

  She returned to her room. She looked to her window, at the white muslin billowing in the breeze. She went to it and peered down at the gardens. Too far to jump. But the room just below had its shutters open. If she was careful she could balance on them before leaping.

  She pushed the thought of the dunes aside; she’d deal with them when she got to them. If she got to them. She climbed onto the window ledge and leant out. Her silk trousers quivered in the wind. She turned, lowering herself.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Olivia heard the waves in her dreams before she connected consciously with the realisation that she was still alive. She raised her hand to her face, eyes smarting at the burn of her cheek, and brought her fingers away. They were sticky with congealed blood. Hassan had struck her right on the same spot she’d hurt in her fall from Bea, opening the skin.

  Moving her head as little as she could, she took in where they were. He hadn’t brought her far, he probably didn’t dare whilst it was still dusk. They were beneath a lighthouse, on the peninsula at Montazah bloody Bay. The lighthouse loomed above them in the grey twilight, its lamp black, no longer in use. The beach curved around to the left, some metres below. The horses were tethered beside them, too far from the road to be spotted. Not that anyone would think to look. Who came here at nightfall? No one but adulterers and murderers, it seemed.

  How far were they from the Pashas’ home, from the other scattered mansions and peasant dwellings in the area? Olivia had heard talk of plans to build a grand palace and gardens nearby for the royal family. She wished it had begun already, that there were a few hundred workers camping in the vicinity. As it was, there was no one close enough to hear her scream.

  Why hadn’t Hassan killed her already, if that was what he wanted to do?

  He reached out, as though to touch her face. ‘I’ve never hit a woman before today,’ he said. ‘I wish I didn’t have to hurt you.’

  He sounded sorry. She could almost be convinced that he was, if he hadn’t hit her so bloody hard and didn’t currently have the same gun he had blindsided her with dangling menacingly between his knees.

  ‘Did you shoot Fadil?’

  ‘Not shoot.’ He leant against the fencing wall and shut his eyes. ‘The gunshot would have alerted the house. I just helped him to have a rest. A long rest. He’ll be sleeping yet in the cellar beneath your stables.’

  ‘Oh my God. You battered him?’ Olivia pictured Fadil tacking up his horse, weathered face set with purpose. Hassan creeping up from behind, not letting himself be seen. She caught her breath. As if Fadil hadn’t been through enough.

  Hassan’s hair lifted in the breeze, his white robes rippled. Goose pimples prickled beneath Olivia’s bodice. In contrast to the past nights’ balminess, the air was growing cold. Edward had told her how freezing the nights could become in the open desert, how insignificant he felt amidst the rolling dunes.

  Was he back yet? Trying to find her?

  Had Imogen spoken to him?

  ‘Here.’ Hassan dribbled water into her mouth from a flask. She made to take it from him, but her hands stuck behind her, bound. She shifted her weight on her cramped arms and swallowed against the rising panic in her throat. ‘Why are you doing this to me? Would Tabia have wanted it?’

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t say her name.’

  She stared at him, wanting to hurt him. ‘She died here, didn’t she?’

  His eyes moved to the distant horizon. He said nothing.

  ‘Did Jeremy kill her?’

  He nodded slowly.

  Even though Olivia had guessed it, she felt a jolt of shock. Jeremy. Jeremy.

  ‘It was as I was taking Tabia back to her hut,’ said Hassan, ‘close to dawn. We heard Sir Gray and your husband; they were shooting for wild pigeons, drunk, I think.’

  Olivia remembered how they’d staggered from the Pashas’ ball saying they were going to make a night of it. Just like old times. She’d been relieved, pleased Alistair wasn’t going home with her.

  ‘I was afraid of them seeing us,’ said Hassan. ‘I didn’t want Sir Gray to ask questions about why I was there.’

  ‘Had you brought my sister?’

  ‘Much earlier, just as the party finished. I walked her down to the beach, I often used to take her there for her… Meetings.’

  A picture of them together shot through Olivia’s mind. What was it the maid, Elia, had said? His clothes, they weren’t fine, and his skin, it was very dark. So it was Hassan whom Elia and Nailah had seen with Clara; Clara’s driver, not her lover at all. Olivia cursed herself for a fool. It seemed so obvious now.

  Hassan confirmed it was so. ‘Nailah told me afterwards how she’d seen me with Ma’am Gray. She was shocked, worried I’d been untrue to Tabia.’ He shook his head. ‘I never could be.’


  ‘No. You’re quite the gentleman.’

  ‘I was to Tabia,’ he said sadly. ‘After I left your sister on the beach, I would go to her hut. Your sister always made her own way home. That night Tabia died, we spent hours together, talking, walking. We were gone too long, it’s how it was with us: never enough time. Tabia was rushing when we saw Sir Gray and Sir Sheldon shooting, we were a long way from her hut and she was anxious to get home before the children woke.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I hid in the undergrowth and let her go on alone. She wouldn’t wait.’

  He paused. Olivia held her breath, waiting.

  Hassan said, ‘As she drew near them, she tripped.’

  ‘In that rut?’

  ‘Yes. She screamed, Sir Gray turned. His gun went off.’ Hassan closed his eyes. ‘Her whole body slumped, her beautiful body. They ran to her. Sir Gray talked about fetching a doctor, but your husband told him it was already too late. They just let her die.’ Hassan pressed his forearm to his eyes. ‘They didn’t even try to save her. They rode one of their horses over her body to pass her murder off as an accident, then burnt her anyway because of the bullet wound. They fetched a peasant, they must have seen him in a nearby field, and blackmailed him into taking the blame. He had a wife, you see, children to protect.’

  Olivia lay quite still. Slowly, sickeningly, Hassan’s words seeped through her. Her stomach churned, her cheeks worked against the urge to gag. Even she, who knew too well the cruelty Alistair was capable of, felt numb at all he’d done. She could almost see the detached expression on his face as he stood over Tabia whilst she died; the barely concealed enjoyment as he led the horse over her bones.

  The panic in Jeremy’s eyes as he watched. Such a coward.

  And then to drag that peasant man into it; to stand by whilst he was punished so horrifically. ‘I suspect,’ she said, voice cracking, ‘that involving the peasant wasn’t Jeremy’s idea.’ The coldness of it smacked of the inside of Alistair’s mind.

  ‘No,’ said Hassan, ‘I think not. The peasant’s wife lives at your house now, her sons too. At your gates.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ It made awful sense. So that’s why they hated Alistair so. Those poor people. That poor, kind woman. No you cry.

  ‘I was going to speak to them,’ said Hassan, ‘about going to the police. But I thought the mother would be too afraid for her sons, and the police wouldn’t have believed her anyway.’

  ‘So you took Clara instead. An eye for an eye.’

  ‘I told Sir Gray he’d get her back as soon as he confessed.’

  ‘Why did you have to involve her at all?’ Olivia’s head throbbed at the needless malevolence of it. ‘She’s done nothing, nothing.’ Rage bubbled up within her as she remembered Clara’s face in the street that day, the concern in her round eyes as she left Olivia. ‘Don’t be long will you?’ She’d been so unsuspecting of what was waiting for her, so horribly naive. Thinking of it, Olivia wanted to lash out, wipe the conceited composure from Hassan’s face, force him to see the pain he’d so selfishly inflicted. Her arms pulled uselessly against their binding. ‘You didn’t need to do it,’ she said. ‘Why not just go to the police yourself? You were a witness, for goodness’ sake. You’re a coward, nothing but a coward.’

  Hassan’s sickening calm didn’t falter. ‘I am not,’ he said. ‘You think the police would have taken my word against Sir Gray’s?’ He tapped his gun. ‘No, the confession had to come from him.’

  Olivia squeezed her eyes against rising tears of fury. ‘Not Alistair?’

  ‘It wasn’t him that did it. Besides, I knew he’d be more difficult to… bring round. He’s a hard man.’ Hassan looked at Olivia. ‘I’m sure you know that.’

  Olivia pictured Alistair’s flopping body. She’d be relieved he was dead if she wasn’t so afraid she was about to join him.

  Hassan said, ‘Once I take Ralph…’

  ‘Ralph?’ Olivia’s eyes snapped open. ‘No. No. Not him. You couldn’t.’

  ‘I won’t hurt him, I swear it.’

  ‘You mustn’t go near him.’ Olivia nearly choked on the words. She thought of his chubby cheeks, the way he’d been swinging his croquet mallet so sadly all afternoon. His woollen socks crinkling beneath his knickerbockers. Ralph, poor little Ralph. ‘He’s a child. Just a child.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Hassan. ‘Please, stop. I will do what I have to.’

  ‘They’ll work out it’s you,’ said Olivia. ‘They’ll find out.’

  ‘How? You won’t tell them. Your husband can’t. Fadil didn’t see me.’

  ‘Someone else, then.’ There had to be someone left who knew something. ‘Edward,’ she said, ‘Tom…’

  ‘They’ve already interrogated me and let me go.’

  ‘There’ll be others,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he smiled sadly, as if he pitied her, ‘there is no one.’

  ‘There has to be,’ she said.

  He shrugged.

  And even as Olivia’s mind still worked, trying to find someone, anyone – a clue hiding that might yet be found – the truth in Hassan’s words landed like a thud. Oh, Ralph.

  ‘Rest now,’ said Hassan, as though she could. ‘We have a while to go before we can move.’

  ‘Are you taking me to where you took Clara?’

  ‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘I have to. We would be there by now if you’d met me on the desert road as I asked.’

  ‘I’m sorry for inconveniencing you.’

  He fixed her with sorrowful eyes. ‘Of course you are not,’ he said. ‘And now we need to wait to cross the city, until everyone sleeps.’ He leant his head back against the fence. ‘You and your sister will be together soon.’

  ‘I’ll see her?’ Olivia asked.

  Hassan made no answer.

  ‘Will I see her?’ Olivia asked again.

  ‘Ma’am Sheldon,’ he said, ‘rest.’

  Neither of them spoke for a long time after that. Hassan brought out his beads, flicking them with one hand, the gun still in the other. Click-clack. The night grew darker, the first stars came out. Olivia stared up at the silver holes in the blackness, trying not to dwell on the unsettling way Hassan had looked at her when she’d asked to see Clara. Find me, someone. Please, find me.

  ‘You don’t seem angry.’ Hassan’s voice startled her. ‘Your brother-in-law killed Tabia, made another man die for it. Doesn’t it disgust you?’

  ‘Amongst other things.’

  ‘It disgusted your captain, his colonel too. I was there the other night, listening, when Sir Gray told them what he’d done. They’d just brought us back from the parade ground.’

  ‘They didn’t know about Tabia before then?’

  ‘No.’

  In spite of everything, Olivia was glad to know it, to have her anger, against Edward at least, ease.

  ‘The captain told Sir Gray to confess, make amends, fucking face up to it.’

  ‘Much good it did,’ said Olivia.

  Hassan sighed. ‘Sir Gray said no one would take his confession anyway. Your husband, Ma’am Sheldon, he told Wilkins everything the night we took your sister. Wilkins told the consul-general.’

  ‘And no one wants it getting out.’

  Hassan nodded. ‘Your captain said Sir Gray should insist. The colonel told him that he should go to the papers. But Sir Gray told them that Sheldon would just bribe them to keep quiet.’ Hassan paused, eyes cast down to his gun. ‘Money makes gods in this land of ours.’

  Olivia rolled her head back, digesting the sordid web of deceit that had been unfolding all this time. Her cheek throbbed. She was shivering more and more. ‘How did you even get Clara away?’ Her curiosity was a numb kind; she both cared and didn’t at the same time.

  Hassan told her he’d had a man waiting in the street. He’d spoken to him whilst El Masri was buying his tea, pointed Clara and Olivia out, given him the note telling Clara to return to the carriage at all speed, word had come that Angus was ill. ‘I knew she would do as I asked.’ He sho
ok his head sadly. ‘She trusted me. I wanted my man to get her alone; we weren’t sure how he was going to do it. You made it easy by going after Fadil.’

  Olivia felt a stab of pain.

  ‘My man made his move,’ said Hassan. ‘He took your sister on a shortcut back to the carriage. Unfortunately,’ Hassan clicked his beads, ‘they were attacked by some others I had waiting. They took her into a house, then down into the sewers until nightfall.’

  The sewers? Oh God, Clara.

  ‘Ma’am Gray never suspected I was involved,’ said Hassan. ‘I’ve never shown her my face in the desert, not once. We could have released her…’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve ever intended to. I think you’ve wanted to punish her for taking you to that beach in the first place, for Tabia being there that night…’

  ‘You’re wrong. And it could have worked, my plan. If Sir Gray had just confessed.’

  Olivia clenched her jaw. ‘Could have?’

  ‘She ran, Ma’am Sheldon.’ He turned his beads through his fingers, frowned. ‘I cannot see how she could have survived in the desert. We left no water flasks, she had little food. I am sorry, so very sorry, that she did it.’

  Olivia shut her eyes. ‘Her body…?’

  ‘I couldn’t find it. But I’m sure she’s gone.’

  ‘No,’ said Olivia, ‘I won’t believe it.’ But as she spoke, she felt herself shrivel inside. She had learned long ago, after all, that death didn’t need a corpse to make it real. She was hit by images: Clara hugging Ralph, kissing Gus, blonde curls, that dimpling smile… A warm hand holding hers. She could almost feel her. She tried to picture her, again, as a child, her big sister. But she couldn’t, she still couldn’t, and now the only Clara she knew, all she had left, had been taken. Just as she’d got her back. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. The agony that it might be closed around her, an iron band. Her breaths came quick and shallow. She gulped, forcing herself under control. She needed to keep control if she was to have any hope of escape. She had to get away, for Ralph’s sake if nothing else. ‘Who helped you?’ she managed to ask. ‘Who were the men who took Clara?’