Blue Jasmine Page 5

  She stared as the bead curtain moved and Zahra entered the harem. Her veil was let down from her face and she was smiling, an indication that the Shaikh was not in residence. She came to the bedside and murmured good morning. She seemed to accept the situation with such composure that Lorna could only suppose that there had been other girls she had waited upon.

  Lorna flushed hotly at the thought and could barely answer the girl when she asked if the lella had slept well. A finger of sunshine stroked the tousled silk of Lorna's hair, and the Arabian girl looked fascinated, as if never before had she seen someone so fair. The brown eyes slipped to the silken sheet Lorna held against her, and with a tinkle of anklets she ran to a cedarwood chest and took from it a beautiful robe. She brought it to Lorna, who slipped into it without a murmur. It was redolent of a subtle perfume and soft as chiffon to the touch.

  `Whose?' Lorna fingered the pure silk. 'Tell me !'

  The girl looked at Lorna as if she were nice but very perplexing. 'A caravan passed us about a week ago, lella, from which the Prince Kasim bought garments and perfumes to take with him to the palace for Turqeya.'

  Turqeya? The exotic name shaped a vision of someone lissom and lovely and raven-haired, and the silk seemed to burn against Lorna's skin.

  `The Shaikh gave orders that some of these things were to be brought here for the lend s use.' Zahra gestured at the cedarwood chest. 'Does not the lella like such nice things?'

  `I would prefer some coffee, and afterwards a good hot bath.'

  `Bath?' Zahra blinked her long dark lashes. 'The lella took one last night.'

  The lella will take another this morning!' But as she spoke Lorna remembered that she was in a desert encampment not a hotel. Water might be scarce here. `I should very much like a bath, if there's sufficient water, Zahra.'

  `We camp near a well,' said the girl, and her expression added that at this rate it would soon run dry. 'I will fetch coffee for the lella, and I will then heat the water.'

  Merci.' Lorna smiled at the girl, for she was a pretty thing and about the only friend she had in this place ... as thoughts of the Shaikh returned, Lorna felt helpless again, and the silk wrap seemed to add to the feeling. He had meant it for a present for another girl until fate had thrown Lorna into his path, and as the events of yesterday swept over, leading inevitably to her helplessness in his arms last night, a little broken cry escaped her .. .

  Did I alarm the lella?' Zahra had returned carrying a tray.

  `No ... I'm all right.' How could anyone or anything frighten her as the Shaikh did? Even the thought of his autocratic face made her heart quicken.

  Zahra brought the tray to the bed and settled it across her lap. She was longing for a cup of coffee and as she poured it from the copper pot with a long spout, she told Zahra that she need not have brought her anything to eat. 'I am not hungry, only very dry. It must be the desert air that makes me feel so thirsty.'

  The lella is unused to the desert?' Zahra picked up the garment that lay on the stool, and as Lorna watched her the colour ebbed and flowed in her cheeks.

  `I come from a land where the sun is much cooler and where only on the seashore does one find sand dunes.' Lorna spoke with a quiet desperation. England, the convent, and then a year in Paris with her ailing father. How could she have known that her pilgrimage to the East would lead her into a situation she could hardly bear to think about? She, who had scorned men who took liberties, was now deprived of her liberty by a man who didn't care a rap about her feelings !

  `The lella must eat or the Prince Kasim will be angry with me for not taking proper care of you.' Zahra lifted the cover from a dish of crisp rissoles. 'Is not the food to the lella's liking?'

  The spicy aroma of the rissoles rose to Lorna's nostrils and she felt the demands of hunger quite against her will. 'It seems that the Shaikh cracks his whip even when he's away from camp,' she said as she began to eat.

  Zahra gazed at her as if it were an innovation for anyone to speak against him.

  `Zahra; Lorna's heart beat very fast, 'would you help me to get away?'

  The girl backed away from the bed in the same manner as the Shaikh's manservant the evening before. Her lashes veiled her eyes, her entire manner changed from friendliness to something close to hostility. 'I go now to fetch the water for the lella's bath.' She slipped through the beaded curtain and Lorna sat staring after her, the little rush of hope turning to ice in her heart.

  They were all afraid of him! His power was such that no one questioned the presence of an English girl in his tent. Perhaps these people assumed that he did her an honour !

  She pushed aside the tray and slipped out of bed; in the alcove where the big copper bowl was kept she found a toilet commode. She glanced about her, noticing again how spotlessly clean everything was kept. The Prince Kasim ben Hussayn was a fastidious man; a small blessing at least .

  She paced to and fro across the carpet of the harem, her bare feet lost in the tawny leopard skin. She felt caged . . . hurt and betrayed by the desert she had dreamed all her life of visiting.

  She sank down on the leopard skin and buried her head against a hassock. Her fair, silky hair fell forward over her face, and the pale gleam of her arms could be seen through the almost transparent robe.

  That was how Zahra found her when she returned with the copper kettles of hot water. 'Does the lella weep?' The girl touched her hair and Lorna turned a tearless face to her and gazed upwards with clouded blue eyes.

  `You think I should be smiling?' she asked.

  `The Shaikh is much of a man and very handsome.' Zahra' s puzzlement was that of an Arabian girl who had been reared to the idea that men were superior beings. She was unaware that girls like Lorna were not handed over to a stranger and subjected to his will without a murmur of protest.

  `The Shaikh Kasim is the cruellest person I have ever met,' Lorna said bitterly. 'I wish that he be made to suffer, and I wish it with all my heart.'

  Zahra's great brown eyes were fixed in horror upon Lorna. The Sidi Kasim is not cruel to his people . .

  `I have seen him whip a man,' Lorna said with a shudder.

  `The man must have deserved his punishment, and the lella must understand that here in the desert our laws are different from those in a city.'

  `I think the desert makes people cruel,' Lorna whispered.

  Zahra shrugged, as if the English girl's idea of cruelty was not hers. She filled the copper bowl with steaming water and added the scented oil that made the water soft and foamy. From a low table beside the bowl that served as a bath she took a large sponge and gazed silently at Lorna.

  `I can manage on my own,' Lorna assured her.

  `I will wash the lella and make her skin glow as they

  do in the hamman. It is a good feeling . . . relaxing.' `No . . .' Lorna was slightly shocked. 'I prefer to

  wash myself.'

  `The lella should not be shy.' Zahra spoke now as if to an infant. 'There is no need for shame when the body is without flaw.'

  A sensible point of view, Lorna had to admit, but her cheeks were pink as she undressed and stepped into the scented water.

  Zahra sponged her from head to foot, and there was a roughness to the sponge that made her tingle and feel beautifully fresh. Zahra did not meet her eyes, however, when she winced at the touch of the sponge

  against a bruise on her upper right arm. It was dark against her white skin, a mark of the Shaikh's anger just after she had tried to stab him. She touched the bruise with her fingertip and it pleased her that she had left her mark on him. The kinzhal had cut him and there would be a small scar.

  Bathed and wrapped in a towel she stood looking at her breeches and shirt. The breeches could be brushed, the boots polished, but the shirt needed washing.

  She knelt by the cedarwood chest and examined its contents. There was among the silks and velvets a sleeveless tunic of blue brocade that could serve as a blouse if tucked into her breeches ... she was darned if she would wear th
e silk trousers that went with it.

  Zahra tried in vain to persuade her to wear the full outfit. 'I am not a harem girl,' Lorna said cuttingly. 'I won't wear see-through pants and that is final!'

  `If you anger the Prince Kasim, then he will be unkind.' Zahra lowered her lashes. 'Men are that way.'

  `You mean they like their own way.' Lorna stamped into her boots and zipped the waistband of her breeches. The tunic made a passable blouse and the material was quite beautiful with its shimmering mixture of blues. 'You are very young, Zahra, to know about men and their demanding ways.'

  `I am married,' Zahra said shyly. 'My husband Yusuf is in charge of one of the horse stockades, a very important position, for the Sidi Kasim has a great love of horses and his are the finest for many miles of desert land.'

  Lorna gazed at the girl in astonishment. She was

  surely no more than seventeen and yet already she bore the burden of a household and was subject to the will of a husband. 'Now I understand why you were veiled last night,' she said. 'An Arabian doesn't like his wife to show her face to another man, and you are extremely pretty.'

  Zahra blushed, the tinge of pink beneath the pale gold of her skin making her prettier still. `Yusuf is kind to me,' she said.

  `So he ought to be! He's lucky to have you.'

  Lorna swung to the mirror to brush her hair, and the look she gave her reflection was a wry one. The sleeveless tunic glistened against her pale skin, and with her fair hair brushed smooth she had the look of a good-looking page at some barbaric court. As she laid down the brush her fingers encountered the agal the Shaikh had left lying on the dresser. She recoiled from it as from a snake. For a few minutes she had mercifully forgotten him, now she had to escape from the harem, if only into the outer tent.

  She stood at the beaded curtain, gripping it. 'You must not empty that great bowl of water on your own,' she said to Zahra, who was tidying up after her. `I will send Hassan to help you.'

  `The lella is kind,' Zahra said with her warm, soft smile.

  The lella is a fool!' The words came wrenched from Lorna. 'A wilful and obstinate little donkey, Zahra, who should have listened to a friend who warned me to beware of the desert and the dangers it holds.'

  The bead curtain clattered into place behind her,

  and once again she found herself in the main section of the spacious tent. The flap was pinned back and the sunlight streamed in, cloaking the white-robed Hassan as he appeared and gave her a polite salaam.

  Lorna stared at the tent opening. It seemed to offer a means of escape and in her desperation she felt she would have walked into the desert to get away from Kasim ben Hussayn.

  She told Hassan to go and help Zahra to dispose of the bath water, and with an inscrutable countenance he obeyed the order. Lorna walked out into the sunshine and glanced about her with desperately eager eyes. They encountered those of a man who lounged against a mound of riding saddles. He had the lean face of a hawk, and as Lorna walked away from the Shaikh's tent, along a pathway that led into the main area of the encampment, the Arab followed her. She threw him a look over her shoulder and again his eyes were as hooded as a hawk's.

  She paused near a camp fire, on the edge of which stood a row of long-spouted, fire-darkened coffee pots. `I suppose you have been told to be my shadow,' she said in French.

  The Arab bowed his head slightly, his nose and his cheekbones jutting hard against his dark, sunburned skin. His robes were startlingly white against his swarthiness, and it struck Lorna that he was far more Arabian-looking than the Shaikh.

  `I won't be followed about as if I'm a prisoner!' she said desperately.

  `I have my orders, madame.' His French was rather harsh.

  `Sans doute,' she re-joined. 'His Highness is fond of giving orders ! '

  `Madame may take a walk and she may look about the camp.'

  `May I also take a ride on one of the master's horses?'

  `I fear not, madame, not until the Sidi Kasim gives his permission.'

  Lorna bit her lip and hatred of the Sidi Kasim raged in her. She walked on, her fair head held high, aware of the glances that were cast at her by the people about the camp Children peeped at her from around the long indigo-blue skirts of their mothers, and she noticed how the low black tents were pitched to face the east, and that their hangings were removed in daylight so that they looked like cool pavilions.

  She saw gazelle hounds sprawled in patches of shade, and the stockades in which young horses were roaming about. They had a sleek, tempered look of speed and Lorna ached to get her hands on one of them. How swiftly she could then ride away from the man who held her captive in his desert encampment!

  As if reading her thoughts her young Arab guide directed her towards the green shade of the palm trees that guarded the well of the oasis. Date palms from which hung great bunches of red-golden fruit. Lorna walked beneath the rustling palms and remembered that only the day before she had been free as a bird. She had not dreamed that the Oasis of Fadna would prove a place of bad omen.

  Fadna ... Fate. She might have guessed, but had been blinded by the happiness her father had found there; the inspiration and a certain peace.

  `Please lead the way back,' she said to her guide, and there was an urgency in her voice which he evidently mistook for an eagerness to be again in the tent of the Shaikh. A smile touched his lips as he touched a lean hand to his forehead and his eyes, as if to say that his thoughts were hers, his eyes at her command.

  She caught the smile and colour flamed in her cheeks.

  Back in the great tent she threw herself down on the smaller divan and stared at each object, each item of furniture in turn. The lamps were beautifully wrought, the carpets glowed with colour, the ornaments of copper and brass were valuable.

  Cushions, carpets, and rich hangings were purely antique, but there was also a small cabinet of books, and a writing-desk in a secluded corner of the tent. It was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and a nest of many small drawers caught and held her gaze.

  She arose after a moment's hesitation and approached the desk. She traced with her fingertip the gilded lettering on the front of a leather writing-case, and then she tried the drawers and found them locked ... all but one.

  She pulled it open and peered into the tiny aperture. Some objects glittered there and she took them out, breathing with suppressed excitement as she saw that she held a locket on a chain, and an ivory crucifix attached to a rosary of many tiny beads. Lorna opened the locket and found inside the miniature of a young woman with Madonna-styled hair and a pair of wonderful, faintly slanting eyes.

  `My mother was from Spain,' her captor had said.

  His mother, this lovely creature with the warmly curved mouth . . . a woman who had entered of her own free will into the enclosed life of the harem. The woman who must have delighted in her son as a child, but who might not have lived to see him grow into so ruthless and handsome a man.

  Lorna closed the locket and returned it with the crucifix to the tiny drawer. Her hands plunged into the pockets of her breeches. The very fact that her captor was a man of breeding and education made worse the infamy of his abduction of her. She gazed out hopelessly through the opening of the tent . . . out there were people but none of them would help her to escape.

  In one hour, in two, he would return to the encampment. He would come striding into the tent, and Lorna could picture in detail his strong, sun-bitten features; his tallness and his masculine grace. She shrank from meeting again the eyes that were as tawny as a leopard's. The strength seemed to leave her and she sank down on the divan and buried her face in the cushions.

  `Let his horse throw him and break his neck!' she whispered imploringly.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT was the jangling of camel-bells that aroused the camp out of the spell laid upon it by the afternoon heat.

  Lorna had fallen asleep among the cushions of the divan, but now she awoke and sat up ruffling her hair. The tent had grown dim and she re
alized that the day had almost waned. She arose from the divan and walked to the doorway to watch the sunset.

  Women in long robes were busy about the camp fires, and men on horseback had appeared, adding to the sudden vivacity of the scene. A small boy ran to be scooped up in his father's arms and the murmur of deep voices mingled with the jingling of harness as the red and gold sunset flared over the Prince's camp.

  Lorna stood half-hidden in the tent doorway and watched the scene with wondering eyes. Smoke arose from the brushwood fires and mingled its scent with the aroma of coffee and the spicy tang of stew cooking in the pots that hung over the flames. Someone strummed a stringed instrument and the music was strange and haunting

  At any other time Lorna would have been enchanted to be a guest in a colourful camp in the desert, but with the going down of the sun she felt a chill in the air... soon now the Shaikh would return

  and she tried not to think of this as she listened to the chatter of the women as they carried water jars from the well. They were graceful as they walked to their tents, their anklets making a soft music.

  The last rays shone in the west, an almost tortured burst of colour ... the passion stored up in nature, the cruelty, the beauty, and the sadness.

  `As if the sunset when the day did swoon,

  Had drawn some wild confession from the moon.'

  The sun died, leaving little quivers of scarlet in the sky, expressive of pain. Night fell almost at once and a star burned over the camp.

  It was then that Lorna noticed the trio of horsemen riding in from the desert, cloaked, seated on high-stepping mounts whose harness shone silver as they cantered into the firelight.

  A hand of ice seemed to grip Lorna's heart. For seconds on end she couldn't move, her gaze was fixed upon the foremost rider as he wheeled his black mount and dismounted with a wide flaring of his riding cloak. A commanding figure, taller than those about him, reaching out a hand to fondle the horse that had carried him well throughout the day. The stallion neighed softly and thrust its head against the broad shoulder.