“Put it on,” Gordon insists. “And hurry. We must be leaving.”
Isaac, embarrassed, pulls on the chador and follows Gordon out of the room and down the corridor. As they approach the night-guard, Gordon whispers to Isaac, “You must walk like a girl now. And keep silent, no matter what. I will do the talking.”
“I don’t know how a girl walks,” Isaac says.
“Then just walk on your toes. Now follow me, and make sure the veil covers your whole face.”
Gordon and Isaac walk toward the night-guard, a large dark-skinned man with fists like clubs and a curved scimitar hanging from his waistband. Isaac is now fully awake and beginning to appreciate the seriousness of this situation. His heart thumps wildly in his chest.
“Asghar, let us pass,” Gordon says in Persian to the night-guard.
“It’s very unusual that the shah wants one of the women to be brought to him,” Asghar replies. He has been thinking about this since Gordon entered. “The shah usually comes here… when he comes at all.”
“I gave you the signed authorization with his seal,” Gordon says. “We must not keep him waiting.”
Asghar studies the letter that Gordon had previously given him. “Why did he send you?” Asghar asks suspiciously.
“Because I was there. Because the shah can ask anyone he pleases to do anything he wishes,” Gordon says angrily. “Now let us pass.”
“Which girl are you taking?” Asghar begins to reach for Isaac’s veil.
Gordon grabs the guard’s arm and pulls it away. “Do not insult the wife of the shah!”
Asghar looks at Gordon and nods. “But I should ask the shah about this. It’s a very unusual request.”
“Don’t be a fool! Do you want to keep your head? Look what happened to me the last time I questioned the shah.” Gordon holds up the stump of his left arm. “Now let us pass!” he bellows.
Staring at the stump, Asghar finally backs away.
Gordon guides Isaac out of the palace and down a narrow street.
At last Isaac speaks. “How did you get that letter with the shah’s seal?”
“Forged. I’m often in his chamber, where he keeps his seal.”
The two of them walk for half-an-hour until they arrive at the caravanserai. Inside the courtyard, in one of the dusty rooms, Isaac is finally allowed to remove his veil. Out of the blue shadows another man emerges—Jonathon Fury.
“Hello, Isaac,” Jonathon says.
Isaac rushes to his old friend and embraces him heartily. “It’s so good to see you,” he says. “Do you have any news of my father?”
Jonathon looks at Gordon, who shrugs. “I didn’t have time to tell him,” Gordon explains.
“Tell me what?” Isaac asks.
“Isaac, your father was a true hero. He helped us save the body of the Rasul after the execution, but he was killed by the sentinels. I’m very sorry.”
Isaac pulls away from Jonathon. “So he’s dead?”
Jonathon nods.
Isaac thinks about this for a moment.
“But he helped us,” Jonathon says at last. “As much as he could.”
Isaac sighs. This is a lot to digest. “I think they will be looking for us once they find we’re missing,” he says.
“You and I will be leaving in the caravan tomorrow,” Jonathon explains. “But Gordon has decided to stay here.”
Looking at Gordon, Isaac says, “That’s ridiculous. When they learn that you helped me escape with a forged letter, they’ll kill you.”
“There’s nothing left for me in England or America,” Gordon says. “My greatest loves and my greatest sins have been here in Persia. Besides, when they torture me, I will be able to tell them that you fled on horseback through the mountains of Azerbaijan.”
“But why? You could escape with us.”
Jonathon grasps Isaac’s shoulder and says, “He’s made his decision, Isaac. You and I are headed south for the port of Bushire. Of course, you will need to wear the chador as a disguise until we arrive there.”
“No, I can’t!” Isaac complains.
“You can,” Jonathon replies. “Your father did.”
At dawn, the small caravan leaves the caravanserai and heads for the south gate of Tehran. Gordon watches it disappear in the dust, and then walks toward the palace.
He has been despondent and guilt-ridden for many years.
But this morning he smiles.
EPILOGUE
Chillington-hall
A sparkling glaze of ice coats the rolling landscape near Chillington. The carriage clatters over the snow-rutted road that passes through the tiny hamlet, which is surrounded by a majestic forest. The residents—woodsmen and fishermen, wives and children, dogs and chickens—all stop and wave. They recognize this carriage. It belongs to the owner of Chillington-hall. In the heart of the village, the carriage horses find the gateway to the Hall and become more animated, knowing that food and water will soon be provided.
The carriage finally pulls up a few yards from the entrance to the enormous manor-house. Outside the imposing door an elderly woman and gentleman are stomping their feet and clapping their hands to stay warm. When the carriage has stopped, they hobble over to it and open the carriage doors.
“Oh my goodness, my goodness, look who’s here!” Phebe says. “It’s been so long! Come now and get into the warm house. We have tea brewing.”
The old gentleman begins to unstrap a large trunk from the back of the carriage. “Yes now, come along, we’ll get your things.”
And then Isaac Chadwick steps out of the carriage and gives Phebe a warm hug. “It’s been a long time, Grandma,” he says.
The old woman coos and steers the young man into the house. The smell of fresh-baked bread reminds Isaac of his days in Mrs. Rogers’ Nassau-Street kitchen. He feels like a child again.
Supper is wonderful, obviously made by Phebe herself. In the morning, Phebe and Isaac put on warm jackets, gather bouquets of flowers, and walk to the small cemetery to fulfill the main purpose of this trip to Chillington-hall.
Many of Ollie’s ancestors are buried here.
Standing on the edge of the cemetery, Isaac can see the marked grave of Emily Chadwick, Ollie’s great-grandmother, inscribed with Ollie’s endearment, Mum. To Mum’s left is Ollie’s great-grandfather, Edward, and to her right the empty graves of Ollie’s grandfather, Augustus, and his wife, Elizabeth.
There is a grave here as well for Anne Chadwick, Ollie’s mother. The group’s attention, however, is on a new headstone, this one also marking an empty grave. Isaac has ordered this simple inscription: Oliver Chadwick, Wonderful Father and Man of God, 1813-1850.
Phebe lays her flowers on the grave. Isaac motions for her to leave him here alone for a moment, and she does.
Kneeling before the marker, Isaac places his bouquet gently on the grave and then removes a small metal object from his coat pocket, hanging it by a silver chain from the headstone.
He smiles and walks off, leaving Jonathon’s precious last photograph of the Rasul as Oliver’s most fitting tribute.
The Black Pit
The memory of the Rasul is the motivating force that keeps many of them alive—these wretched, tortured Rasulis now thrown into the Black Pit three stories below the ground. The foul stench is overwhelming, and the filth unbearable. Rats rule the depths of this dim and dank cesspool, chewing the eyes and feet of the dead or unconscious. These men could have saved themselves by recanting their faith, but none did, and this is the price for their belief.
The Rasulis occasionally pass time by chanting, but the guards—at least those who can bear the slime and the stink—beat them mercilessly for it. No outward expression of Rasuli belief is allowed in this dungeon of dungeons. And so the men live in their minds, repeating endlessly the words of the Rasul lest they forget, and whispering among themselves the promise of the Rasul, that within nine years of his declaration, another one would come. The One Who will become Manifest. The Promised O
ne of all ages. The Second Blast of the trumpet.
They buoy themselves with whispered reminders that their suffering is the soil from which this other One, as yet undeclared, will arise and revitalize their faith, and bring righteousness and unity into the world.
One hundred Rasulis and nearly fifty common criminals—thieves, assassins, rapists, and highwaymen—crowd the dark pit, most of them naked and without bedding. One of them, however, has been singled out for the cruelest treatment. He sits with an enormous chain around his neck. The weight of it grinds into his flesh and forces his head and shoulders to bend painfully. This man had been a Persian nobleman, the son of the vizier of Nur, a man of such charity and character that only his popularity among the people had prevented him from execution as a Rasuli.
It was well-known that he had organized the infamous Rasuli council at Badasht and had been a confidante of Jalal and Danush. When the government was finally emboldened by its execution of the Rasul and the slaughter of twenty thousand Rasulis, the grand vizier had finally found the courage to arrest Mirza Ramin.
Of all the suffering in the Siyah Chal, this man suffers the most, and yet it is he who lifts the spirits of the others through his example and his whispered words of enlightenment.
It is now evening, and the darkness here is even darker. Only a torch at the end of a long passageway throws a sliver of light into the pit. Men cough and spit and vomit. They try to sleep, but the cold and the stench are killing. The sick moan and the new prisoners sob.
One of the men is desperately searching his memory for some small reminiscence, some remembered image that will transport him out of this hellish hole and into a happier world. A year in heavy chains and five months in the Black Pit, with no expectation of release, has shattered his memory, but one vision comes to him. It is an English manor-house surrounded by meadows and thick forests. A paradise of open air and sunshine, of glistening snow and galloping horses. He holds onto the image, and for a moment the sweet fragrance of fresh-baked bread replaces the stench of the pit, and he smiles.
His memory is now refreshed, and he remembers the beginning of the end. A dark night. A fight. Being dragged out of a moat, and facing an angry sentinel. The roar of a musket, and the biting pain of a bullet striking him in the chest. He believes that the bullet must have been guided by God, for it had struck head-on the small silver cylinder that he had worn around his neck since a child, the cylinder that contained a verse of the Qu’ran, and the bullet had shattered into pieces, painfully scattering the hot fragments into his skin, but failing to complete its fatal mission. He remembers that the sentinels had been frightened by this “miracle” and had taken him, bloody but breathing, to the local governor who had turned him over to the grand vizier, a man who believed that death was too kind a sentence for a traitorous Englishman.
Ollie remembers, too, one of the verses from the Surih of Joseph that been sealed in that silver charm. Thou art my Protecting Guardian in the world and the Hereafter. He cannot believe that God would have saved him for no purpose, and this belief gives him hope.
He turns his eyes toward the man drooping under the heavy chains. He wonders at how this man can now turn his eyes upward in the darkness, as if seeing a vision of his own; and how he can smile, with glistening eyes, despite the pain and illness with which he is afflicted. He watches the man’s face, which is glowing, not with light but with the radiance of certitude. He watches as this man breathes in deeply the stench-filled air as if it were the fragrance of roses, and then sigh with a knowingness like the breath of God. And as the man sighs, a refreshing breeze seems to blow over Ollie, and suddenly he knows, he knows.
And he remembers, many years ago, two twelve-year-old boys in the warm Bushruyih sand. He can feel the sand now, see the face of Jalal eclipsing the sun. He can remember how both of them so desperately longed to be the first to discover the Promised One, how they had seen the Prophet in the clouds, and how he had believed that his steadfast friend had been rightly blessed with the honor.
He turns with recognition to the man in the heavy chains, and understands at last that both boys had been blessed. Two boys, two Prophets.
Many years ago, a cloud had found Jalil.
At last, Ollie’s cloud has come to him.
Explore the Series from the Beginning
See how it all began. Chase through the streets of India and Kashmir as Charlotte seeks two ancient relics that everyone wants, all would kill for, and no one has found.
Yet.
You Won't Believe What Happens Next!
The Shekinah Legacy was only the beginning. The exciting sequel takes you far beyond the boundaries of your imagination and into the heart of the Mother of All Conspiracies.
Ollie's Cloud Page 57
