Son of Adam

by Margaret Rome

  ‘You’re a sadistic brute who enjoys inflicting pain!’

  He laughed, a hard, dispassionate sound that served to increase her loathing. ‘And you, mademoiselle, are a masochist who welcomes punishment as a penance.’ ‘Welcomes? Never!’ she choked. ‘My only hope is that in time I may become numb, as a body becomes numb to torture.’

  ‘In which case,’ he assured her dryly, ‘I shall be left with no option but to double the dose!’

  It was a bleak morning with a cold wind blowing from the north-east. Sun blazed out of a sky veiled in dusty mist but gave no warmth as they walked towards the well where the camels were tethered. Dove fussed around the children, trying to ensure that their cloaks were sufficient protection against the cutting wind and eddies of driving sand.

  Impatiently, Salim shrugged her away, his excitement intense as he watched men loading a spare camel with packets of dates, dried meat, butter, sugar, tea, salt, coffee and onions. ‘Are we having a picnic, Miss Grey?’ The words tumbled from lips aquiver with joy.

  Relieved that neither child was showing signs of trepidation, she replied absently, ‘Yes, dear, we’re going on holiday with Monseiur Blais—just a short one,’ she added with fingers crossed. Her eyes were upon the vicious-looking animals they were about to mount, huge beasts with spindly legs and upper lips curling into supercilious sneers, exposing formidable yellow teeth.

  However, Marc Blais seemed to find them satisfactory. As he finished directing the placement of goatskins full of water, he slapped a camel on its flank and complimented Major Yasin, ‘Powerful animals, and in excellent condition! Now, Miss Grey,’ Dove quaked when he turned his attention her way, ‘if I share my camel with Salim, do you think you can manage to stay on yours with a little help from Bibi?’

  When the children fell about laughing her cheeks flamed with anger. Not only the children were amused, the men helping to load the camels were also convulsed by his sarcastic wit. Only Major Yasin, after an initial twitching of the lips, seemed sympathetic.

  Dove was glad it was he and not Marc Blais who pulled down the camel’s head and showed her how to place a foot upon its neck so that she was lifted up to within easy reach of the saddle. She fought against betraying terrified panic as, perched high in the air on the back of the swaying beast, she forced herself to relinquish her hold on the headrope in order to receive Bibi, who settled with a squeal of delight in front of her.

  ‘Bravo, Miss Grey,’ he murmured, eyeing a face tense with alarm. ‘Have no fear, camels are notoriously ill-tempered, but this one was singled out especially for you. It is possessed of a comparatively calm temperament and exceptional stamina—which is just as well considering the weight of true British grit it carries upon its back.’

  Her answering smile wobbled slightly as the camel moved off in the wake of the other two, one supporting Marc Blais and Salim, the other laden with supplies. They were proceeding at walking pace, yet Dove’s heart was in her mouth as she swayed perilously in the saddle, clutching Bibi hard around the waist, convinced that the next roll of the camel would send them plunging from a horrifying height on to a bed bf stony sand. But to her relief it did not happen, and as gradually they picked up speed she understood why the camel had been termed ‘ship of the desert’. It was a method of travel not unlike that of sailing a small boat in rough seas, plunging and rising, being tossed and battered, experiencing all the vertigo and queasiness that accompanied such an exercise. She was grateful to Marc who, motivated either by thoughtfulness or complete indifference, kept his mount a few paces ahead, looking back only occasionally to check up on their safety. Consequently, by the time he reined in his mount to ride alongside her she had almost mastered the distressing symptoms caused by unfamiliar movement and was even beginning to take an interest in her surroundings.

  Gravel steppes had merged into deep sand from which occasional bushes sprouted together with a few dried-up clumps of grass. Gradually dunes began rising up in front of them and as they progressed nearer to the steep mounds of sand Dove began to wonder anxiously about the inevitable ascent. It was as dreadful as she had envisaged. Grimly, she kept tight hold of Bibi when the camel began floundering up a steep incline, pitching them backwards, forwards and sideways in the saddle as it fought its way foot by foot up the hill of shifting sand

  Not unexpectedly, Bibi revelled in the experience, her small body comforted by the feel of an adult arm, her childish mind oblivious to the panic and the dogged determination not to scream that was fighting a losing battle within the girl perched behind. When Marc turned in his saddle to ask with an infuriating lack of concern for her own welfare, ‘Is Bibi all right?’ she had to call upon incredible reserves of bravery to reply with one brief word:

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘Which is more than can be said for yourself, eh?’ The aquiline features beneath the roped headdress were alight with mockery. Saving her the effort of a reply, he continued, ‘The camels are a trifle lazy through lack of exercise, which gives them reserves on which to draw, but their extra weight is a burden to them in this heavy sand. They will, however, revert to their natural state of fitness in a couple of days.’

  ‘A couple of days ...?’ she questioned weakly. ‘Is the camp we’re heading for so far away?’

  He laughed. ‘It is obvious how little you know of the size of the desert, mademoiselle. In this vast, empty waste a two-day journey would be the equivalent, in your country, of a five-minute stroll.’

  His patronising manner goaded her into scoffing, ‘You are supposedly a Frenchman, yet you speak as if you consider yourself to be more Arab than the Arabs!’ He looked taken aback, as if he himself had difficulty in remembering his true origin. ‘No man can live in the desert and remain unchanged,’ he told her with a simplicity she found impressive. ‘I have spent more years here than I have spent in France, which probably accounts for the fact that I feel a much stronger affinity with men of the East than I do towards my own countrymen. Imprinted upon my soul is the brand of the nomad. This terrain, cruel though it is, is now my home, I am under its spell, a spell which no other land, and certainly no human being, could displace.’

  As she was jogged, saddlesore and weary, farther into the interior, Dove mused upon his words. If his years in the desert outnumbered those he had spent in his homeland he must have been little more than a boy when he enlisted in the Legion. It was hard to imagine the grim, hardbitten man as an impressionable youth, yet the ease with which he had adapted to the Arab way of life seemed to indicate a wildness within that had no place in a civilised land—a wildness tamed only by the maturity that comes with age, and not by the discipline of any human hand. He had come out East in search of excitement and had found immediate affinity with men who were both cruel and courageous, free and unbridled, men with strange beliefs and even stranger customs, men who considered themselves noble and who treated their womenfolk like slaves ...

  ‘I’m hungry!’ Salim wailed.

  ‘So am I!’ Bibi had been fidgeting for some time; excitement had begun to wane and now that Salim was providing an excuse for a diversion she seized upon it gratefully. ‘Can we eat now, Marc, my tummy is rumbling!’

  Dove jolted with surprise. The ease with which Bibi had addressed him by name completely discounted her theory that the children held him very much in awe. She expected him to ignore their plea, and was again surprised by his immediate capitulation.

  ‘Very well.’ The look he directed towards the children caused Dove a spasm of envy. So he was not so invulnerable to charm as she had thought—albeit the charm of hungry infants!

  He chose to camp in a hollow among the dunes where the camels could graze without showing themselves upon the skyline. Salim and Bibi enjoyed themselves enormously collecting wood for the fire over which Marc cooked porridge for them and brewed strong coffee which Dove drank with a grimace, finding it as bitter and unpalatable as the man himself. Nevertheless, she did not complain. Since their escape into the desert she ha
d sensed within him an air of patronage, a conviction that sooner or later she would begin to weaken, which was why she was determined that even if called upon to endure ordeals through fire and water she would not murmur.

  She felt his derisive glance upon her face, as, hiding all signs of her distaste, she chewed the stringy meat and soaked up watery gravy with a hunk of dried bread. Then, sensitive to his every change of mood, she looked up and saw him staring with a tense expression towards a mass of low, dense cloud outlined by a rosy tinge as it moved across the sky. Even while she watched the colours darkened to yellow, then red, a huge cloud-mountain within which she could make out great eddies and whirls as it swiftly advanced. The first gusts of wind were tugging at their cloaks when Marc jumped to his feet, snapping the order:

  ‘Quickly, get the children down on the ground with their heads covered. Don’t leave them—and make sure they stay put!’

  As he raced towards the camels she did as he had

  ordered and seconds later a curtain of dust and sand swept down upon the hollow, blocking out daylight instantly. In the pitch darkness the children whimpered. With an arm around each, Dove comforted them as they crouched together beneath a blanket, resisting the might of a wind that threatened to tear them apart. Sand forced its way through the blanket, attacking their eyes, mouths and nostrils with stinging force. She felt a weight against her back as the howling, shrieking wind piled sand around them while, in shaken whispers, she urged the children not to feel afraid, assuring them they were in no danger as, somewhere outside in the dark, black void, Monsieur Blais, their protector, was ensuring that no harm would befall them. To her relief, their panic subsided and as she hugged them closer they relaxed against her, utterly convinced, believing her words— because she believed them herself!

  As suddenly as it had arisen the wind dropped. With great caution they eased their way out of the blanket and discovered a familiar, yet unfamiliar, landscape— towering dunes where before there had been flat ground, filled-in-hollows, rocks that had appeared from out of nowhere scattered across the sand as if thrown by a giant hand. After a couple more silent seconds birds reappeared in the sky and at the sound of an animal cough Dove spun round and saw Marc soothing the frightened camels as he led them forward.

  The children, still slightly dazed, were engrossed in the chore of removing as much sand as they could manage from their hair and eyes and paid little attention to Marc as he approached. His face, pitted with sand, showed signs of strain as he dropped the head-ropes and stepped in front of Dove. Sharing such a traumatic

  experience ought to have forged a common bond, yet she still felt shy of flint-grey eyes that roved her face searching, she had no doubt, for signs of hysteria, and of twisted lips that seemed always to be poised on the edge of a sneer.

  But he did not move nor speak. As they stared mutely at one another it was as if two strange spirits met, hesitated, then said hello ...

  Am I in the grip of some strange desert madness? she wondered, searching frantically for words to bridge the brooding gap.

  But it was he who spoke first, two simple words that shocked the breath from her body. ‘Good girl!’ he said, then strode away.

  Dove had received many greater, more fulsome compliments in the past, but none that conjured within her a swell of awe, humility and pride such as she experienced at the recognition that for one fleeting, probably never-to-be-repeated moment she had met with the approval of one of the tough, legendary legion compose d’etrangers!...

  CHAPTER NINE

  As the day progressed Dove began to feel a grudging admiration for the man whose desert expertise was leading them unerringly towards their destination. Every mile or so he stopped to check their course on a compass, then moved on, always observant, his restless eyes scanning the horizon, noting every movement on a landscape so monotonous she lapsed many times into daydreams.

  Once the dust storm had passed the sun had grown

  hotter. Not unexpectedly, the children became fractious. Dove did her best to occupy their minds by teaching them nursery rhymes and urging them to sing, but they were in no mood to enjoy such a pursuit so, much to her chagrin, Marc took command.

  To the untrained eye the desert seems a barren place, but under his tuition both Dove and the children were amazed to discover that the terrain actually teemed with life. Showing a patience she had not guessed at, he lifted Salim and Bibi from their saddles, then crouched with them on the sand, pointing to a mound of loose sand on the desert floor, a crater-like windbreak made by sand grains brought one by one to the surface by a colony of busy ants.

  ‘Down there,’ he told them, ‘is a bustling underground city full of highways and byways, made by worker ants who collect grains of sand, carry them to the surface and deposit them around the entrance. The worker ants also keep the chambers tidy and wait on the swollen queen whose life supply of eggs is stored in her body. These others that you see scuttling outside the nest are looking for food for the colony. These are very clever ants—in order to make sure they arrive safely home they have a built-in pedometer that registers how far they have travelled and they take their bearings from the position of the sun, just as we do.’

  They resumed their journey, and for the following half hour the children were enthralled by this newly-discovered topic of ants, an insect which up until then they had considered to be beneath their notice. Marc Blais answered their rapidly-fired questions with a patience she found astonishing, then when the subject was completely exhausted he somehow managed to discover other items of interest—a female wolf spider picking her way delicately across barren ground, her abdomen covered with several layers of newly-hatched spiderlings; a spiny-tailed lizard whose short, slow-moving legs condemned him to live close to his burrow; a homed viper almost buried in the sand; a fennec, its sensitive ears alert, creeping across the desert in search of food.

  They made laborious progress, stopping to examine many different objects, yet Marc seemed to consider that the children’s welfare should take precedence over speed. This lack of urgency was explained when, noticing him once more scanning the horizon, she ventured:

  ‘Are you worried that we may be being followed?’

  ‘Initially I was, but not now. The windstorm has obliterated our tracks so there is no longer any need for haste.’

  Hot, thirsty and drooping with weariness, she felt she had been force-marched across the burning sands by the time Marc decided to make camp for the night. He would have continued longer, she suspected, had it not been for the children. But her theory was proved wrong when, as an incentive to flagging spirits, he pointed a finger towards the horizon.

  ‘There is a small oasis ahead, no more than a water-hole, but with a few trees to offer shade.’

  Dove could have flung her arms around each of the slender palm trees encircling a pool of green scummy water. The children were exhausted, Salim almost asleep on his feet, yet their energy revived to the extent that they insisted upon helping to erect the two leather tents which had been loaded on to the camel and upon scouting around for twigs and dried camel dung for the fire upon which their supper was to be cooked.

  ‘As a special treat, an award for good behaviour,’ Marc offered, ‘who would like baked beans for supper — English beans in tomato sauce?’

  In response to a chorus of approval, he unpacked from a saddlebag a tin with a label so familiar Dove felt a pang of homesickness that did not ease as she sat around the campfire scooping up beans from a tin plate, rolling them around her tongue, savouring their tasty, well-known flavour.

  ‘We must be the only travellers in this area,’ she remarked, scraping the last of the delicious sauce on to her spoon.

  He gave a short laugh. ‘A stranger to the desert might be forgiven for thinking so, but in fact there are bound to be several camps dotted around. Arabs seldom camp next to a well, they dislike being disturbed by the noise of animals being watered.’

  She was glad to turn her attent
ion to Salim, whose head was resting heavily against her knee. The exhausted infant had fallen fast asleep, and Bibi, her small mouth rounded into a yawn, was not very far behind. Quickly sizing up the situation, Marc held up a cautioning hand, warning her to remain still, before lifting the boy into his arms and carrying him inside a tent where a sleeping bag was ready and waiting. Bibi was next; she made no demur as, still completely dressed, she was tucked into her bag which he then zipped up to her chin.

  ‘Goo’ night, Miss Grey! Goo’ night, Marc ...’ she murmured, then joined her brother in soundless sleep.

  Feeling awkward, Dove rejoined Marc around the fire. It was still light, but the sun descending swiftly towards the horizon had lost some of its heat; she knew that in less than half an hour they would be enveloped by sudden nightfall. She looked up when she heard a chuckle and surprised a grin which he swiftly erased.

  Gravely, he suggested, ‘When you wash, I should pay particular attention to your face, which is so streaked you resemble a Red Indian in warpaint!’

  Aghast, she swept up her hands to cover her cheeks. What a sight she must look! She had completely forgotten to touch up the dye during the heat of the day, to prevent it from running. How like him not to remind her—to fill his day with amusement at her expense!

  Feeling like a clown, she rose to her feet. ‘If you provide me with soap and a towel I’ll do it now.’

  ‘Over there!’ He tossed a nod across his shoulder. ‘You’ll find everything you need in the saddlebags.’ When he stretched luxuriously and eased long legs into a more comfortable position she stumped furiously away. It was useless to expect gentlemanly gestures from a man who was Arab all through. Still, she wanted no favours, for to be in his debt would be to owe toll to the devil.

  Darkness had fallen by the time she had searched out soap and towel, divested herself of the obnoxious Arab garments and sorted through the meagre collection of underwear she had crammed into her pockets before rushing from the palace. She felt a rasp against her skin as she inched her way down to the edge of the pool. During the dust-storm sand had penetrated every item of clothing; she could hardly wait to rid herself of the irritation. Using a bush as cover, she undressed, giving each garment a thorough shaking, shivering as cool air brushed against her warm flesh.