“Why do you tell me this?” asked Mireille, stroking Charlot perched on her arm as she gazed into the fire.
“It is written,” he said, “that one day a Nabi, or Prophet, will come from the Bahr al-Azraq—the Azure Sea. A Kalim—one who talks with spirits, who follows the Tarikat, or mystic path to knowledge. This man will be all these things, and he will be a Za’ar—one who has fair skin, blue eyes, and red hair. It is a portent to my people, which is why they stared at you.”
“But I am not a man,” said Mireille, looking up, “and my eyes are green—not blue.”
“It is not you I speak of,” Shahin said. Bending over the fire, he pulled out his bousaadi—a long thin knife—and extracted the glowing ring from the hot coals. “It is your son we’ve awaited—he who will be born beneath the eyes of the goddess—just as it was foretold.”
Mireille didn’t question how Shahin knew her unborn child would be male. Her mind was brimming with a million thoughts as she watched him wrap a strip of leather over the glowing ring. She permitted herself to think of the child in her swollen belly. At nearly six months, she could feel him moving inside her. What would become of him, born in this vast, treacherous wilderness—so far from his own people? Why did Shahin believe he’d fulfill this primitive prophecy? Why had he told her the story of Daia—and what did it have to do with the secret she sought? She shook these thoughts from her mind as he handed her the hot ring.
“Touch him quickly but firmly on the beak—just here,” he instructed as she took the leather-wrapped ring, still glowing hot. “He feels it not much, but he will remember.…” Mireille looked at the hooded falcon that sat trustingly on her arm, its talons digging into the thick wristband. The beak was exposed, and she held the hot ring only inches away. Then she paused.
“I cannot,” she said, pulling the ring away. The reddish glow flickered in the cold night air.
“You must,” Shahin said firmly. “Where will you get the strength to kill a man—if you haven’t force enough to place your mark upon a bird?”
“Kill a man?” she said. “Never!” But even as she spoke, Shahin smiled slowly, his eyes glittering gold in the strange light. The Bedouin were right, she thought, when they said there was something terrible about a smile.
“Do not tell me you will not kill this man,” Shahin said softly. “You know his name—you speak it nightly in your sleep. I can smell the revenge in you, as one can find water by scent. This is what brought you here, what keeps you alive—revenge.”
“No,” said Mireille, though she felt the blood beating behind her eyelids as her fingers tightened on the ring. “I came here to find a secret. You know that. Instead, you tell me myths of some red-haired woman who has been dead thousands of years.…”
“I never said she was dead,” said Shahin abruptly, his face expressionless. “She lives, like the singing sands of the desert. Like the ancient mysteries, she speaks. The gods could not bear to see her die—they turned her into living stone. For eight thousand years she has waited, for you are the instrument of her retribution—you and your son—just as it was foretold.”
I will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes on the day when the rocks and stones begin to sing … and the desert sands will weep blood-red tears … and this will be a day of retribution for the Earth.…
Mireille heard Letizia’s voice whispering in her mind. And the abbess’s reply: The Montglane Service contains the key to open the mute lips of Nature—to unleash the voices of the gods.
She looked out over the sands, a pale and eerie pink in the firelight, swimming beneath the vast sea of stars. In her hand was the glowing golden ring. Murmuring softly to the falcon, she took a deep breath and pushed the hot bezel against its beak. The bird flinched, trembled, but did not move as the acrid smell of burning cartilage filled her nostrils. She felt ill as she dropped the ring on the ground. But she stroked the falcon’s back and folded wings. The soft feathers shifted against her fingertips. On the beak was a perfect figure eight.
Shahin reached out, placing his big hand on her shoulder as she stroked the falcon. It was the first time he’d touched her, and now he looked into her eyes.
“When she came to us from the desert,” he said, “we called her Daia. But now she lives at the Tassili, where I am taking you. She stands over twenty feet tall, towering a mile above the valley of Djabbaren, above the giants of the earth—whom she rules. We call her the White Queen.”
They’d moved alone through the dunes for weeks, pausing only to flush small game, releasing one of the falcons to hunt it down. This was the only fresh food they’d had. Milk from the camels with its sweaty, saltlike taste was their only drink.
It was noon of the eighteenth day when Mireille came over the rise, her camel slipping in the soft sand—and caught her first glimpse of the zauba’ah, those wild whirlwind pillars that ravaged the desert. Nearly ten miles away, they reared a thousand feet into the sky, columns of red-and-ocher sand slanting heavily into the wind. The sand at their base whipped a hundred feet in the air, a churning sea of rocks, sand, and plants in a wild kaleidoscope like colored bits of confetti. At three thousand feet they cast off a huge red cloud that covered the sky, arching over the pillars and obliterating the midday sun.
The tentlike scaffolding that shrouded her from the desert glare flapped high above the camel saddles like the sails of a boom crossing the sea of the desert. This was the only sound Mireille heard, this dry flapping—while in the distance the desert tore itself silently to shreds.
Then she heard the sound—a slow hum, low and frightening like a mysterious Oriental gong. The camels began prancing, pulling against their leads, thrashing wildly in the air. The sand was slipping away beneath their feet.
Shahin leapt off his camel, grabbing the reins to pull it about as it kicked out at him.
“They’re afraid of the singing sands,” he cried to her, grasping her reins as she clambered down to help pull the scaffolding apart. Shahin was blindfolding the camels as they lurched against him, crying with their hoarse, braying voices. He hobbled them with a ta’kil—shackling the foreleg above the knee—and forced them down into the sand as Mireille lashed down their gear. The hot wind picked up its pace as the singing sands grew louder.
“They are ten miles away,” Shahin was screaming, “but they move very fast. In twenty minutes, perhaps thirty, they’ll be upon us!”
He was hammering tent posts into the ground, tacking down tent canvas over their belongings as the camels brayed frantically, clawing on their hobbled forelegs for purchase in the moving sands. Mireille cut the sibaks, the silken cords that bound the falcons to their perches, grabbed the birds, and shoved them into a sack, pushing it under the lip of the flattened tent. Then she and Shahin crawled beneath the canvas that was already half buried in heavy, bricklike sand.
Under the canvas, Shahin was wrapping muslin over her head and face. Even here, under the tent, she could feel the harsh grit stinging her skin, forcing its way into her mouth, nose, and ears. She flattened into the sand and lay there trying not to breathe as the sound grew louder—like the roar of the sea.
“The serpent’s tail,” said Shahin, throwing his arm across her shoulders to form a pocket of air for her to breathe as the sands crushed down ever heavier upon them. “He rises to guard the gate. This means—if Allah wills us to live—we will reach the Tassili tomorrow.”
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
MARCH 1793
The Abbess of Montglane sat in the vast drawing room of her apartments at the Imperial Palace in St. Petersburg. The heavy tapestries that covered the doors and windows shut out all light and seemed to lend the room a sense of security. Until this morning, the abbess had believed she was secure, that she’d prepared for every eventuality. Now she realized she’d been mistaken.
Around her were the half-dozen femmes de chambre that the Czarina Catherine had assigned to wait upon her. Seated silently, their heads bowed over their tatting and embroidery, the
y watched her from the corners of their eyes so they could report her every move. She moved her lips, mumbling an Act of Hope and an Apostle’s Creed so they would think she was deep in prayer.
Meanwhile, seated at the inlaid French writing table, she opened the pages of her leather-bound Bible and secretly read for the third time a letter the French ambassador had smuggled to her only that morning—his last act before the arrival of the sleigh that would carry him back to France in exile.
The letter was from Jacques-Louis David. Mireille was missing—she’d fled from Paris during the Terror and perhaps even left the shores of France. But Valentine, sweet Valentine, was dead. And where were the pieces? the abbess wondered in desperation. That, of course, the letter did not say.
Just at that moment, there was a loud crash in the outer foyer—and a clatter of metal followed by agitated cries. Rising above all was the stentorian voice of the czarina.
The abbess folded the pages of her Bible over the letter. The femmes de chambre were glancing at one another uneasily. The door to the inner chamber flew open. The covering tapestry was ripped from the wall, falling to the floor in a clatter of brass rings.
The ladies leapt up in confusion—sewing baskets upset, yarns and fabrics spilling over the floor, as Catherine barreled into the room, leaving a bevy of confused guards collecting themselves in her wake.
“Out! Out! Out!” she cried, crossing the room as she pounded a stiff roll of parchment against her open palm. The ladies-in-waiting scurried from her path, strewing bits of thread and cloth in their trail as they tripped over one another trying to reach the door. There was brief congestion in the foyer as women and guards collided in an attempt to escape the sovereign wrath; then the outer doors slammed shut with a clang—just as the empress reached the writing desk.
The abbess smiled up at her calmly, the Bible closed on the desk before her. “My dear Sophie,” she said sweetly, “after these many years, you’ve come to say Matins with me. I suggest we begin with the Act of Contrition.…”
The empress slammed the rolled parchment down on the abbess’s Bible. Her eyes were blazing with fire. “You begin with the Act of Contrition!” she cried. “How dare you defy me? How dare you refuse to obey? My will is the law of this State! This State, that has given you shelter for over a year—despite the advice of my counsellors and against my own better judgment! How dare you refuse my command?!” Snatching up the parchment, she yanked it open before the abbess’s face. “Sign it!” she screamed, grabbing a plume from the inkwell and splattering ink across the desk with trembling hand, her face black with fury. “Sign it!!”
“My dear Sophie,” said the abbess calmly, taking the parchment from Catherine’s fingers, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” She surveyed the paper as if she’d never seen it before.
“Plato Zubov told me you refused to sign it!” she cried as the abbess continued to read. The pen still dripped from between the czarina’s fingers. “I demand to know what reason you give—before I cast you into prison!”
“If I’m to be cast into prison,” said the abbess with a smile, “I fail to see what difference my excuse would make—even though it might be of vital interest to you.” She looked back at the paper.
“What do you mean?” asked the empress, putting the pen back into the inkstand. “You know perfectly well what this paper is—to refuse to sign it is an act of treason against the State! Any French émigré wishing to continue my protection will sign this oath. That nation of dissolute scoundrels has assassinated their king! I’ve expelled Ambassador Genet from my court—I’ve severed all diplomatic relations with that puppet government of fools—I’ve forbidden French ships entry to any Russian port!”
“Yes, yes,” said the abbess a little impatiently. “But what has this all to do with me? I’m hardly an émigré—I left long before the doors of France were closed. Why should I sever all relations with my country—even friendly correspondence that does nobody any harm?”
“In refusing, you suggest you’re in league with those devils!” said Catherine in horror. “Do you realize they voted to execute a king? By what right do they take such liberty? Those street scum—they murdered him in cold blood, like a common criminal! They cropped his hair and stripped him to his shirt-sleeves and carried him in a wooden tumbril through the streets for the rabble to spit upon! On the scaffold, when he tried to speak—to forgive the sins of his own people before they butchered him like a cow—they forced his head down on the block and set the tambours rolling.…”
“I know,” the abbess said quietly. “I know.” She put the parchment on the desk and stood to face her friend. “But I cannot cease communication with those in France, despite any ukase you may devise. There is something worse—something more dreadful than the death of a king—perhaps than the death of all kings.”
Catherine looked at her in astonishment as the abbess reluctantly opened the Bible before her and extracted the letter from between the pages, handing it to her.
“Some pieces of the Montglane Service may be missing,” she said.
Catherine the Great, Czarina of all the Russias, sat at the black-and-white-tiled chessboard across from the abbess. She picked up a Knight and placed it at the center. She looked fatigued and ill.
“I don’t understand,” she said in a low voice. “If you’ve known where the pieces were all this time, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me? I thought they had been scattered.…”
“They were scattered,” the abbess replied, studying the board, “but scattered by hands that I thought I controlled. Now it seems I was mistaken. One of the players is missing, along with some pieces. I must recover them.”
“Indeed you must,” the empress agreed. “And now you see you should have turned to me in the first place. I’ve agents in every country. If anyone can get those pieces back, I can.”
“Don’t be absurd,” said the abbess, sliding her Queen forward and picking off a pawn. “Eight pieces were in Paris when this young woman disappeared. She’d never be fool enough to carry them with her. She’s the only one who knows where they’ve been hidden—and she’d trust none but a person she knew was sent by me. To this end, I’ve written to Mademoiselle Corday, who used to manage the convent at Caen. I’ve asked her to journey to Paris in my behalf—to pick up the trail of the missing girl before it is too late. If she should die, all knowledge of those pieces dies with her. Now that you’ve exiled my postman, Ambassador Genet, I can no longer communicate with France unless you help me. My last letter has left with his diplomatic pouch.”
“Helene, you are too clever for me by half,” said the czarina with a broad grin. “I should have guessed where the rest of your mail was coming from—the parts I was unable to confiscate.”
“Confiscate!” said the abbess, watching Catherine remove her Bishop from the board.
“Nothing of interest,” said the czarina. “But now that you’ve shown enough faith in me to reveal the contents of this letter, perhaps you’ll go a step further and permit me to assist you with the service, as I originally offered. Though I suspect it’s only the removal of Genet that’s caused you to confide in me—I am still your friend. I want the Montglane Service. I must have it before it falls into hands far less scrupulous than mine. You’ve placed your life in my hands by coming here, but until now you’ve never shared with me what you know. Why should I not confiscate your letters, when you’ve shown no trust in me?”
“How could I trust you that far?” cried the abbess fiercely. “Don’t you think I’ve used my eyes? You’ve signed a pact with your enemy, Prussia, for another partition of your ally, Poland. Your life is threatened by a thousand foes, even within your court. You must know your son Paul is drilling Prussian-looking troops on his estate at Gatchina, planning a coup. Every move you make in this dangerous game suggests you might seek the Montglane Service to serve your own ends—power. How do I know you’d not betray me as you’ve betrayed so many others? And though
you may be on my side, as I long to believe—what would happen if we brought the service here? Even your power, my dear Sophie, will not extend beyond the grave. If you should die, I tremble to think of the use to which your son Paul might put these pieces!”
“You need not fear Paul,” the czarina sniffed as the abbess castled her King. “His power will never extend beyond those poor miserable troops he marches about in their silly uniforms. It’s my grandson Alexander who’ll be czar when I’m dead. I’ve trained him myself, and he will do my bidding—”
Just then the abbess put her finger to her lips and motioned to a tapestry that hung against the far wall. The czarina, following her gesture, raised herself stealthily from her chair. Both women stared at the tapestry as the abbess continued speaking.
“Ah, what an interesting move,” she said, “and one that poses problems.…”
The czarina was marching across the room with powerful stride. She yanked the heavy tapestry aside with a single gesture. There stood Crown Prince Paul, his shamed face as purple as a cabbage. He glanced at his mother in shock, then down at the floor.
“Mother, I was just coming to pay you a visit.…” he began, but could not fix her with his eyes. “I mean, Your Majesty, I was … coming to see her reverend mother the abbess on a matter …” He fumbled with the buttons of his jacket.
“I see that you are as quick-witted as your late father,” she snapped. “To think that I bore in my womb a crown prince whose greatest talent appears to be snooping about at doorways! Leave us at once! The very sight of you disgusts me!”
She turned her back on him, but the abbess saw the look of bitter hatred that crossed Paul’s face as he glared at his mother’s back. Catherine was playing a dangerous game with this boy; he was not half the fool she believed him to be.
“I pray the Reverend Mother and Her Majesty will both excuse my most ill-timed disturbance,” he said softly. Then, bowing low to his mother’s back, he stepped backward once and exited the room in silence.
The Eight Page 37
