“Of course I did. I even did you the courtesy of leaving the shutters open.”
He flicked a glance to the window. “Damn. And I went to all the trouble of picking the locks, too.”
He turned back to me. “You may as well put the gun down, you know. You won’t shoot me.”
“You seem very sure of that.”
“Well, it isn’t so much that you won’t shoot me as that you can’t.” He opened his hand and a palmful of bullets fell onto my coverlet.
“Damn you.” I put the gun down and crossed my arms over my chest. “Very well. I suppose we can be civilised about this. Make yourself comfortable. That disguise must be painful.”
“You’ve no idea.” He straightened, rolling his shoulders back and shedding the archaeologist’s stoop for the beautiful posture I remembered so well. The shadow he threw on the wall behind him grew as he eased himself up to his full height. He loosened the mouthpiece, with its terrible yellow teeth, and shoved it into his pocket before taking out a small tin and his handkerchief.
“You might not want to watch this part.”
“I’m not squeamish,” I told him, which we both knew was a lie. But I was curious, and I watched the process with fascinated horror.
Slowly, carefully, he reached up to his eyes and levered out a pair of almond-shaped lenses that covered the whole eyeball. I put out my hand and he gave me one to inspect. I held it to the light, marveling at the thinness of the glass and the delicacy of the painted brown iris. “Clever,” I told him as I handed it back. “It’s the one thing I couldn’t figure out about the disguise.”
“They’re hideously uncomfortable and most of the time I wear coloured spectacles, but in close company I take the precaution of covering up my own,” he said blandly, batting his lashes. He was entirely correct about that. They were remarkable eyes, and no one, having once seen them, would forget them.
“The beard is appalling,” I pointed out.
“Quite disgusting. I’m always getting bits of food stuck in it, but it’s entirely my own, I assure you,” he said, tugging at the hairs on his chin.
I got out of bed and went to him, standing so close I could see the first tiny lines just beginning to etch themselves at the corners of his eyes, lines he had not had the last time I had seen him. Slowly, deliberately, I drew back my hand and slapped him as hard as I could across the face.
He rocked back on his heels, turning his head back slowly. He was smiling.
“I entirely deserved that.”
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t a figment of my imagination.”
“Satisfied now? I am flesh and blood, as you can see,” he added, daubing the blood away from his lip.
I went to the bed and sat with my back against the pillows.
“When did you figure it all out?” he asked in a conversational tone.
“I knew you’d sent the photograph yourself when I found the banknotes. REAPERS HOME. It’s an anagram of the inscription on my wedding ring—hora e sempre. Really, Gabriel, a child could have cracked that. I hope you haven’t been spending your time composing codes for an international spy ring. You’d be something worse than useless.”
He gave me a ghost of a smile, the same buccaneer smile that had gotten him into and out of more trouble than most men see in a lifetime. “Have a heart, love. I was in a hurry. Besides, I thought you’d enjoy a little cloak-and-dagger stuff.”
He swayed a little on his feet. “Are you still intoxicated?” I asked pleasantly.
“Not much. I vomited most of it as soon as I could get to my bottle of ipecacuanha. Nasty stuff, but it does the trick. Got rid of what was left in my stomach, but there was a fair bit of it already in my blood. God, I loathe arak.”
“You did a tremendous job convincing me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t trying to convince you. But it seemed a good idea to persuade your associates that I was precisely what I claimed to be.”
He swayed again, and I drew up my feet. “Oh, for God’s sake, sit down before you fall over and hurt yourself.”
“You always were thoughtful,” he said, giving me that small smile again as he settled himself at the foot of the bed. His shadow still loomed on the wall behind him, larger than life and inky black.
“It’s not kindness. I just don’t fancy mopping up your blood. Now, where should we begin?”
Gabriel hesitated. “I know I owe you the whole story. But now isn’t exactly a good time.”
“I think I deserve more than evasions, Gabriel.”
His jaw tightened. “As I said, I am aware of what I owe you, Evie. Believe me when I tell you I am not in a position to explain, at least not yet.”
“Believe you? Veracity isn’t precisely your strong suit. You faked your own death,” I reminded him.
“I had no choice.”
“So you say.” My voice was pleasantly neutral and a good deal calmer than I felt. “I should so like the chance to make up my own mind about that.”
He sighed. “I can’t discuss it just yet. I’m still making sense of it all myself. The less I involve you the better.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward. “Then what am I doing in Damascus, Gabriel? Sending me that photograph to lure me here was your doing. The banknotes and the song at the restaurant were arranged to show me I was on the right track. And now you won’t explain why?”
“I can’t,” he said simply. “I know it’s too much to ask you to take my word for it, but I can’t explain any of it yet.”
“Then why am I here? And perhaps more to the point, why are you here?”
He had the grace to look uncomfortable. “I want to make amends.”
“Amends? Gabriel, you make amends when you play the wrong suit in a game of bridge. You cannot possibly make amends for faking your own death.”
“Fine,” he growled. “Call it atonement, then. Penance. I did a terrible thing to you and it’s in my power to make it right, or—” he hurried on as I opened my mouth “—as right as I can. Look here, I’m not asking for forgiveness. What I did is so far beyond that it would be laughable to suggest you could ever find it in your heart, and God knows, I don’t deserve it. But I want the chance to do something for you.”
“There is nothing on earth you could possibly—”
He held up a hand. “Yes, there is. I’ve acquired something...valuable. But you’ll have to take my word for it.”
“Take your word for it? Not bloody likely! Besides, if you have something for me, why not bring it here—” I broke off. “Oh, my God. You can’t bring it because you’re involved in something illegal. And that’s why you faked your own death five years ago, isn’t it? You’re a criminal.”
He winced. “Criminal is such an ugly word. And a subjective one.”
I opened my mouth to blast him, but he held up a hand. “Let’s not quarrel, pet. I haven’t the stamina for it just now.” He gave me an appraising look. “I must say, you’re taking this all much better than I expected,” he said, his tone mildly amused.
“What did you expect? Hysterics? Violence?”
“I don’t know what I expected,” he said quietly. “But you were a flighty girl when I saw you last, not this cool, composed woman who travels with a loaded pistol and plans for midnight visitors.”
I set my chin mulishly. “I’ve grown up, Gabriel. I had to.”
“Another sin to drop at my door,” he said lightly. But his eyes were bleak and he looked away. When he spoke again, his tone was brisk. “I can’t stay long. Matters are...complicated. I have to get back to the dig site and sort a few things out.”
He reached into the breast pocket of his filthy khaki shirt. He drew out a small tin tobacco box and opened it, rifling through an assortment of oddities until he unearthed a grubby bit of paper. He handed
it over, but I hardly liked to touch the thing it was so disgusting. “That’s the man you’ll need to see in London after I’ve brought you what it is I have to give. He will give you the money—and it will be a substantial amount,” he added.
I placed the dirty paper carefully on the bedside table and gave him a level look. “Why me?”
It might have been easier for him if he’d looked away, but that sharp blue gaze never wavered. “Because I hurt you. As I said, this will make amends.”
“And you can scrape me off your conscience, is that it?”
He went on, still never taking his eyes from my face. “I’ve no one I can trust. Except you.”
I shook my head. “You’ve no one in the whole world you can trust except the wife you abandoned five years ago? Gabriel, that might well be the saddest thing I have ever heard.”
He flashed me his buccaneer smile. “You have no idea. Now, will you help me?”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Just sit tight in Damascus. I’ve stashed my little find for safekeeping. When I am able to retrieve it, I’ll bring it here. The rest is up to you.”
“How long will it take you? I can only stay in Damascus a fortnight. I have obligations,” I told him, thinking of the tour I had quite possibly wrecked for the sake of what might be nothing more than a chase of the wildest, goosiest variety.
“I’ll leave first thing in the morning for the dig. A day out, a day to get my hands on the item and two days back into the city. I will deliver it to you by the end of the week, inshallah,” he added.
“Inshallah? My God, you have changed. You were an agnostic the last time I saw you.”
His smile was grim. “I’ve learned to hedge my bets. If I don’t show up by the start of next week, forget I ever contacted you. Just go on about your business and get out of Damascus. I’ll find another way to get the thing to you. If that’s the case, I want you to go on, sooner rather than later.” He rose to his feet in languid motion, his shadow stretching as he died.
“How did you know where to find me?” I asked. “Where to send the photograph?”
“Everyone knows the name Evangeline Starke. You’re famous.” He reached into his pocket for the horrid lenses and slipped them into his eyes. Next came the mouthpiece and then the stooped posture. “By the end of the week,” he promised. He slid into the darkness and left, so quietly I might have imagined he had been there at all.
There was not even a crease where he had sat on the coverlet. Only the handful of bullets he had slipped from my pistol betrayed that anyone had been there at all. He might as well have been a ghost, I thought, as I blew out the lantern. Except I had made him bleed. It was a very small consolation.
* * *
The next few days were torturous. Aunt Dove and I visited more of the tourist sites, posing for photographs in all of the souks and palaces and outside of mosques. We met Syrian gentlemen from the interim government and their veiled wives; we dined with French advisors and lunched with British expatriates. It ought to have been a whale of a time, but I kept one eye on the calendar, watching each day creep past in a blur of stone streets and perfumed courtyards. Halliday was often in attendance, always attentive to Aunt Dove, but clearly seeking us out for my company. From time to time his hand brushed mine or he let his gaze linger a moment too long for comfort. The air was thick with possibility and things unsaid. But for the moment I was content not to say them. Gabriel occupied far too many of my thoughts to spare any good ones for another man. Not yet. Not until I had laid his ghost once and for all.
My greatest consolation was the reappearance of Rashid the morning after the dinner party. Aunt Dove and I descended to the main court to find him there, waiting patiently as a dog at the foot of the stairs. He offered no excuses for his absence, but his praise for Aunt Dove was so fulsome, she was eating out of his hand in a matter of minutes. He put himself in charge of Arthur Wellesley, letting the little parrot ride on his shoulder through the streets and feeding him titbits of fruit and teaching him Arabic phrases. He somehow made himself a part of our ragtag household, and he spent just as much time making himself useful in our rooms or running errands as he did acting as our tour guide.
As the days passed, my mood sank lower and lower, and Aunt Dove took me aside to give me a boots-up-the-bum speech while Rashid cleaned out Arthur’s old cage. He had just brought the parrot a ghastly new cage from the souk, a filigreed affair so heavily gilded it looked like something out of an Arabian Nights fantasia. I thought it was horrid, but Aunt Dove merely cooed at him and tipped him lavishly for his thoughtfulness. He set about clearing out the old one and laying out seed and water in Arthur’s new quarters while the bird had a snack on Aunt Dove’s turban.
She pulled me down next to her on the divan, plucking Wally’s latest letter out of my fingers as she pitched her voice low. “Now, dear, you’re a handsome girl. Everyone says so. It is time to close the deal,” she advised me.
“I beg your pardon?”
She waved her hands, scaring Arthur from his dish of seed onto her head. “Damn the kaiser,” he muttered irritably from the top of her turban.
“My darling,” Aunt Dove continued, “Halliday is a patient man. Too patient. He’s let you call the tune and he’s danced it. Now, I’ve warmed him up for you, but I can’t keep stringing him along. It’s time for you to give up the goods, Evangeline.”
I choked down my surprise. “What did you have in mind?”
She shrugged. “Heavens, child, you’ve been married. I should think you know how to get things started. Show him you’re open. Men are the dearest creatures, but none of them is very bright. If you want one, you’ve got to show him. Be direct!” She paused, her eyes brightening. “Do you have a nice collection you could invite him up to see? Coins? Cigarette cards?”
“I’m sure I could think of something,” I said faintly.
She patted my hand. “That’s my girl. Now we’ve cleared the air, I think you ought to have a treat. With Rashid’s help, I’ve arranged something quite special, quite special indeed.”
I narrowed my eyes. Aunt Dove had a unique notion of what constituted a treat. It might be anything from a mule ride to the rim of a volcano to a baby crocodile in the bathroom.
“We are going to have a bath,” she announced.
* * *
To my relief, the bath was a proper Turkish hammam, a holdover from the days of Ottoman occupation. Rashid led us to the bathhouse in the old quarter of the city, another of those sprawling but nondescript buildings from the outside. He bowed low, indicating we should enter while he waited outside, but some secret amusement danced in his eyes. Doubtless the notion of a houseful of nude, fragrant women, I decided with a sigh of impatience. I hurried in, stopping just inside the anteroom with a gasp. It was a virtual palace, gilded and tiled and filled with fragrant steam. The scent of ancient perfumes—cinnamon and frankincense and cedar—hung heavy in the air, mingling with the more delicate notes of the flowers whose crushed petals floated in the various pools.
But the pools, I soon learned, were not the point of the place. It began with a disrobing that left us each a slender towel to cover our modesty. We were hurried into a low-ceilinged chamber where attendants ladled water onto coals so that great clouds of steam hung thickly in the air, leaving us feeling oddly light when we moved into the next room. There, a mixture of beet sugar and lemon juice was cooked up, stirred constantly until it bubbled at which point it was whisked off the fire and pasted onto us. Before I knew what they intended, strips of muslin were applied and then torn away, taking the candied mixture and everything else with it. Aunt Dove then explained about Mohammedans and their views on body hair. A few extremely personal services followed, and then we were hurried off to be stretched and massaged and scrubbed and wrapped in wet sheets and gently flogged with small branches of herbs. Our
hair was washed and our nails cleaned, and finally we were sent into the main bath to relax.
Women of every age and description frolicked about, as naked as the day they were born, entirely free of embarrassment, and once I gave myself up to the heavenly sensations of the steaming water I thoroughly enjoyed it. After a long soak, we were wrapped in warm, dry sheets and seated on divans with sweetmeats and glasses of mint tea to refresh ourselves. Aunt Dove promptly fell asleep. I felt as light as thistledown, all of my cares evaporated in the steam. I was dozing gently when I heard my name.
“Mrs. Starke! Fancy meeting you here!”
It was Miss Green, wrapped in a sheet, as well, her complexion flushed deeply red and her hair once more standing at attention. Her flesh was mottled and wobbling, but she looked as happy as any bacchante.
“Hello, Miss Green. My aunt was determined to show me the full Damascene experience,” I told her. I glanced to where Aunt Dove was snoring gently on her own divan and motioned to Miss Green to share mine. She seated herself and we took glasses of sweet sherbet from the attendant.
“It’s quite relaxing, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice conspiratorial. “Makes one feel almost indecent to be so free of cares.”
“Have you lots of cares?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward. “My dear Mrs. Starke, you’ve no idea. The Arab interim government simply have their hands full with trying to run the country. They’ve left the archaeological business to their French advisors, and the French have been extremely difficult, threatening to revoke our permit because they have decided to object to the presence of a German on our staff. It’s the rankest prejudice because no one who ever met Herr Doktor Schickfuss could ever think him anything but a gentleman and a scholar.”
“So the French authorities are holding a grudge against him because of the war?”
Her lips tightened. “The rankest prejudice,” she repeated. “They would only have to look at the fellow.” She pitched her voice low. “He looks exactly like Father Christmas.” She giggled, and I began to wonder if there might have been something illicit in the herbed smoke. But Miss Green, like most scholars, simply spent so much time in her own head that any true relaxation made her giddy as a child. She went on. “He is quite short, you see, not exactly an elf, but very short indeed. And he is plump and his whiskers are white as snow. He is a gentleman and a gifted linguist. He is quite invaluable to our team, does all the odd jobs no one else can be bothered to do.”
City of Jasmine Page 8
