‘I’m surprised that someone as obviously greedy as your brother has only one.’
‘He may have his faults but he is still my brother. I would appreciate it if you kept such thoughts to yourself. Apart from anything else if overheard they might be considered treasonous.’
‘My apologies, it was a poor attempt at humour,’ Julia said contritely. ‘Where are we now?’
‘This building is the library,’ Azhar said, opening the door of the largest pavilion which on closer inspection was cruciform in shape. ‘We will be comfortable in there.’
The door to the library was panelled in bronze. Glass-fronted bookcases lined the walls of each of the arms of the cruciform, while light poured in through the windows set into the domed roof at the centre, where a huge round couch was placed. Azhar sat down here, indicating that Julia should join him.
He stretched his long legs out in front of him and folded his arms. ‘You asked if Kamal and I were close. You would imagine that we would be so, with only two years between us, no mother, no other siblings, but we were not. I was a typical boy in many ways. I liked to ride—horses and camels—I liked to fight with my sword and my fists, I liked to swim and to run. Kamal—well, Kamal has always been indolent. Unfortunately, our father was a man who valued what he called masculine prowess. In my father’s eyes, Kamal was less of a boy because he did not shine as I did at such things. I never—how do you say it—rubbed his face in it?’
‘Nose.’
‘Nose. Well, I never did that, but it didn’t matter. Kamal was jealous. I think there was a part of him that wished to emulate me. And he relied on me too, to play the big brother, even though he would rather he was the elder brother, you know? He was always outreaching himself, relying on me to bail him out when he came unstuck. Like the occasion when he took liberties with the sister of one of our friends, and her brothers set upon him.’
‘He must have resented you,’ Julia said.
‘That has not changed,’ Azhar said wearily.
‘It must have been difficult for him to stomach,’ she added, thinking that that had not changed either. ‘Taller, stronger, faster.’ Much more attractive.
‘And my worst crime of all. Older.’
‘The heir, by accident of birth. A heinous crime indeed,’ Julia agreed wryly.
‘I know, but I believe Kamal really does believe it is my fault.’
‘You don’t like him much, do you?’
Azhar winced. ‘I try not to let it show, but he is not stupid. Weak and petty and indolent, but far from stupid. I am not blinded by my determination to abdicate, Julia. All Kamal needs is the incentive to improve. Once he knows that Qaryma is his, that I truly am out of his life for ever, then he will prove himself.’
But she was beginning to suspect that Azhar was blinded. Like her, he craved his freedom, but there the similarities ended. Daniel was dead. Azhar’s love of his kingdom had merely been buried. He was an honourable man with a strong sense of duty. This notion he had, that he could set Qaryma to rights and Kamal too, it was a most laudable intention, but it was impossible.
Julia’s toes curled inside her slippers, but honesty was what Azhar had requested of her, and true to herself was what she had resolved to be. ‘You have set yourself a herculean task if you plan to remedy things in just three short weeks, and—and I think you should ask yourself why,’ she said carefully. ‘No matter how much you deny it, you care for your kingdom, and you know in your heart that your brother is not fit to rule—will never be half the man that you are. You may quell your conscience by shoring things up, by remedying whatever problems you uncover. That may permit you to enjoy your freedom for a few more years, but it will be what it has always been—a mirage. You will be obliged to come back eventually. I am so sorry, Azhar, but whether you like it or not, the one thing you cannot abdicate from is your conscience.’
Azhar got to his feet. He was angry, she could see the pulse beating in his throat, but he was making a huge effort not to show it. ‘I will not permit you to condemn me to a lifetime of captivity until you understand what that would entail. And the price I have to pay. Come with me.’
‘Where are we going?’
He strode out of the library, across the Third Court to yet another set of iron gates, which he opened with a huge key, ushering her through a passageway to a door, which he then heaved open. ‘The Fourth Court,’ Azhar declared.
* * *
It was a square formed by three high walls and one low parapet. In the centre was a kiosk, but it was the gardens which drew Julia’s attention, for they were laid out not at all in the formal style of the Third Court, but in a riot of colour, more in the style of an English cottage garden than the garden of an Arabian king.
The space was surprisingly intimate. Aromatic herbs planted at the edges of the winding mosaic paths scented the air as her tunic brushed against them. The parapet looked out over Al-Qaryma to the oasis and the desert beyond, the same view as the large garden, but from a higher viewpoint. That wall there must form the boundary between the two. Rushing from one path to the next, she found a tantalising mixture of flowers and shrubs, some exotic, some quintessentially English, all jostling for space, and living happily together in a way she would not have given any credence to had she not seen it for herself.
‘It is as if someone has commanded the East to merge with the West,’ Julia exclaimed. ‘A secret garden, whose is it?’
‘The Fourth Court is exclusively for the use of the King of Qaryma.’
Julia’s eyes widened. ‘Your father’s private quarters?’ While she had been running from path to path, Azhar had remained quite still at the door of the Court. This was no magical garden for him. It was his father’s inner sanctum. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should not have allowed myself to get so carried away.’
Azhar shrugged. ‘I had forgotten,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember it being so—’ He broke off making a vague gesture. ‘Seeing it through your eyes, I can see it is—I can understand your surprise.’
‘Who tends to it?’
Another shrug. ‘The palace has an army of gardeners. There is an entrance door in the connecting wall to the main garden where you have been working.’
Julia hadn’t noticed a door, and she had spent hours and hours in the other garden, but now was hardly the time to ask if it was possible to...
‘I’ll have someone give you the key,’ Azhar said, as if he had read her mind. ‘If you really want to paint this, that is. I doubt there are any new species for you to catalogue.’
‘It is the unexpectedness of it that appeals to me. I had not thought—that is, I thought your father—all this, it does not really equate with the man I imagined.’
‘No?’
Azhar’s expression was unreadable, but there were tiny lines of tension around his eyes, and the pulse still throbbed at his throat, a sure sign that he was discomfited. She touched his arm lightly but he turned away towards the building which stood in the centre of the Court. ‘This is the Royal Kiosk,’ he said.
The kiosk had two storeys, the broad roof overhanging to form an arcade which surrounded the building. A huge gilded dome emerged from the centre of the roof, with a small minaret sitting incongruously beside it. The marbled exterior was, like the kiosk in the main garden, alabaster white, throwing the brilliant colours of the tall stained-glass windows, six on each storey on the façade alone, into stark relief.
Azhar opened the double door with another key and stepped aside for Julia to enter. The room was breathtaking in its beauty and of staggering size, for it was double height, taking up the entire length of the kiosk, the ceiling arching up into the gilded dome at the centre of the roof giving it a cathedral-like ambiance. Light streamed in, vivid rays of emerald, red and blue, dancing over the intricate mosaic floor. The walls were tiled to the first-floor level, in rich glazed colours that gleamed, as if they had been polished. From the dome hung the biggest chandelier Julia had ever seen, on a very long
chain, set over the marble table chased with gold which stood in the very centre of the room. At the furthest end, set into a window embrasure, was an enormous divan. There was no other furniture in the huge space.
‘Another throne room,’ Julia said, her voice hushed.
‘This is where my father conducted his private audiences. He signed his official papers and royal decrees at that table. This is the room from which he ruled and wielded power.’
Julia turned in circle, her head back, gazing up at the dome. ‘When you said this was your father’s private quarters, I imagined something more intimate.’
Azhar’s smile was twisted. ‘There are some anterooms at the rear of the kiosk, it is bigger than it looks from the outside, but this room is where my father spent most of his time.’
Julia shuddered. It was an intimidating space for one man to occupy, but then she supposed that was the point. ‘Well, now I can at least understand the garden,’ she said. ‘Of course it is a very clever design trick,’ she added, when Azhar looked at her questioningly, ‘It seems so wild, uncontrolled, so natural and yet that can only be achieved by meticulous planning.’
Azhar was prowling restlessly around the room, stopping every now and then, his eyes drawn to the divan. Judging from his stormy expression, his memories were extremely unpleasant. ‘My father liked to control everything, even nature,’ he said bitterly. ‘It was in this very room that I last saw him. It was here that he informed me that if I left I would never be welcomed back. Growing up, my father tried to shape me and cultivate me like that garden out there. Tame any wildness, impose order. As I grew older the constraints became unbearable, but the more I protested, the more repressive he became. I am a man of action, have always been a man of action, yet he would not let me do anything. He wanted to control every minute of every hour of my time. Growing up here as heir, Julia, my life was not my own.’
He spoke with such passion, she couldn’t help but empathise. Her marriage bonds were as nothing to the bonds a king-in-waiting must bear. ‘I can see now why you felt you had no option but to leave.’
‘He gave me no option. I was desperate to go earlier, but until I was twenty-one I could not do so without his permission. At the time, all I wanted was the taste of freedom, not to leave Qaryma for ever, but to be free to leave for a period and then return. He would not grant me even temporary freedom.’
‘Perhaps because he knew that once you tasted freedom you wouldn’t come back,’ Julia said.
Azhar shrugged. ‘It is impossible now to know whether that was true. If I had left at sixteen or seventeen or even twenty, with my father’s good wishes, without the need to make my own way, to pay my own way, I would not have started my business. I would not have sown the seeds of the life which I have grown for myself outside Qaryma. I would in all likelihood have returned, but I cannot be certain.’
‘Your father was a fool, if you ask me,’ Julia said. ‘I’m sorry if that is treasonous, but it’s true. He should have known that trying to keep you in Qaryma was a recipe for disaster. There is nothing more tempting than forbidden fruit. His behaviour more or less guaranteed your departure.’
Azhar laughed dryly. ‘As the date of my birthday drew nearer, I began to dread that my father would be taken ill. That he might die before I could escape was one of my greatest fears.’
‘But you did escape.’
‘On the very morning I achieved my majority. “I am twenty-one,” I said to him, “you can’t stop me from leaving.”
‘“But I can prevent you from returning,” he said to me. And so, in a way, he granted me my freedom. Freedom, Julia.’ Azhar grinned. ‘For the first time, to be free to do what I wanted when I wanted, to go where I wanted—to answer to no one. You cannot imagine how good that felt.’
‘I can,’ she said warmly.
‘Of course you can.’ He pressed her hand. ‘We want the same thing, after all. As time passed, as I began to establish my business, to make a life for myself, I quickly realised that I would never return. That my father had actually done me a favour by exiling me.’
‘And allowing you to become a man of action.’
‘With every action my own. I had escaped. I was no longer a King-in-waiting defined by my kingdom, I was my own man defined by my own success—and in the early days, my failures too. I love my business, Julia. It is a—an integral part of me. If I remained here, as King, I would have to give it up. I won’t do that,’ Azhar continued, his tone harsh. ‘I left my father with a son who valued what I did not, a son he could have moulded into his image as he had tried to mould me. Kamal is much more malleable. But my father...’
‘You think that your father was blind to Kamal’s weaknesses?’
‘I doubt it. But I don’t understand why he didn’t take steps to remedy them.’
‘Perhaps, despite your conviction to the contrary, it was because your father secretly hoped you might return.’
‘No! I am here as a punishment, not a reward. Kamal will rule, Julia, because I will not surrender my life to wed myself to Qaryma.’
‘Is it really such an onerous task?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Couldn’t you appoint agents to run your business? I’m sorry, Azhar, but if being a king is truly so awful, then frankly I don’t understand why a weak man like your brother would be so happy to take it on.’ She flinched at Azhar’s thunderous expression, but she had gone too far to stop now. ‘I know your brother only through what you have told me of him, and what you’ve told me has led me to surmise that he is selfish, that he is lazy and that self-sacrifice is anathema to him.’
Azhar said nothing, but his eyes were flinty. He didn’t like what she was saying. She hated saying it, but she owed it to them both to continue. ‘The people of Qaryma love you, Azhar. They respect you. They want you and not your brother. I know you think that it’s undeserved.’ She paused, but still he said nothing. ‘You think that because Kamal remained by your father’s side, that he deserves it more,’ she forced herself to continue, ‘but—but you are the legal heir, you are the heir your father wanted, not Kamal. What’s more, with every sleepless night you spend trying to make this kingdom safe for your brother’s rule, you prove that you love it. How can you see this as a prison sentence, when it is so obviously what you are destined to do?’
She felt quite sick with dread, for she knew how painful her words were to him, but beneath it all she was proud of herself for having had the gumption to speak. Azhar slowly unclenched his fists. When he whirled around, she thought he was going to leave her, but instead he strode over to the divan and sat down.
‘I am Sheikh al-Farid, King Azhar of Qaryma,’ he declaimed. ‘I am the source of all power, all wisdom, all happiness. I am the infallible one. I make the laws and I enact the laws. None can question me. None can harm me.’
Her jaw dropped.
‘These are the words I would speak at my coronation, and his father before him. You may think those words ridiculous, mere ceremony, but it is what many people here in Qaryma believe. As King, I would wield absolute power, Julia. That is how Qaryma has always been ruled. There is no other way to rule, except not to rule.’
He pushed off his headdress to run his fingers through his hair, then held out his hand for her to join him. ‘Such power comes at a high price. It is extremely hard work to appear infallible,’ he said wryly. ‘My life would not be mine to command, it would belong to my people. Those words, the promises I would make if I took the crown, would require me to put this kingdom and these people first, before everything else.’
‘As you did, I imagine, over the last ten years, while building your trading empire.’
His smile became a grimace. ‘Exactly like that, which is part of the problem. Unlike my brother, I am incapable of doing things by half-measures. In ten years, I have never been satisfied with my achievements, have always been driven to conquer one more summit and one more. Can you imagine how I would be, when placed in charge of a kingdom?’
‘Sel
fless,’ Julia said.
She meant it as a compliment, but Azhar shook his head grimly. ‘No, for that implies that I would not resent it, and I would.’ He took her hand, lacing his fingers between hers. ‘You ask if I could appoint agents to run the business I have grown from nothing, the business which it the only thing I have of my own. The answer is that, yes, I could, if all I cared about was the money, but I don’t.’
‘No,’ Julia said with a smile. ‘It is the doing that you care about, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. The doing,’ Azhar repeated, pressing her hand. ‘And the travel—or at least—it is not so much wanderlust, that craving has been satisfied in the last ten years, but there is a difference between knowing that I can go wherever I choose, and knowing I can go only where my kingdom requires me to go, do you see?’
She nodded once more. She was beginning to see very clearly. Azhar’s reference to Qaryma as a gilded cage seemed now an appalling understatement. ‘You would be wedded to your kingdom.’
‘And expected to wed for the kingdom,’ Azhar said dryly, ‘a fitting bride taken for the sole purpose of producing an heir, whose sole purpose would be to inherit all this. And so it would go on. I won’t do it, Julia.’
She pressed his hand to her cheek. ‘The problem is, Azhar, that you are so honourable, and so incapable of giving anything less than your all, that you would do it, if you had to. You could not be half a king, could you?’
‘No. Now do you understand why I cannot be one at all?’
Julia bit her lip. ‘Yes,’ she said. It was not a lie. She understood perfectly why he would not, and why he must leave, but she could not imagine how he was going to salve his conscience afterwards.
Chapter Seven
Action, Azhar resolved, action was what was required to demonstrate to Julia that he was right and she was quite wrong. Yes, three weeks was ambitious, but where there was a will, anything could be achieved, and he had a will of iron. Curse Julia and her doubts and her endless questions.
The Widow And The Sheikh (Hot Arabian Nights, Book 1) Page 12
