Court of Veils Read online

  She sighed, and wished Isabela had not been their witness.

  Saturday morning dawned, and the air felt like wine when Roslyn went out into the Court of the Veils after breakfast. Duane was due any minute, but she had to take leave of Nanette and she flew on sandalled feet across the hall and up the stairs.

  It was Nanette’s custom these days to take breakfast in bed, and she was buttering a triangle of toast when Roslyn entered her room. The blue voile of her bed-netting was drawn back, framing her snow-blue hair, and her fineboned face showed its age in the early morning light. She studied Roslyn unsmilingly, as she came and perched on the bedside, slim as a boy in a raspberry-red shirt and cream-coloured pants.

  ‘You look gay as an urchin this morning, my child, so I take it you are now prepared to enjoy this week-end away from Dar al Amra. Tell me,’ Nanette busied herself with the coffee pot, ‘has my grandson anything to do with this change of heart?’

  ‘Do you mean Tristan?’ Colour came and went in Roslyn’s cheeks; she guessed at once that Isabela had been in and planted a little mischief in Nanette’s ear. ‘That girl,’ Roslyn could almost hear her, ‘she appears to have forgotten Armand already. I saw her last night, kissing Tristan on the harem tower.’

  ‘The Sleeping Beauty is a charming story, but this is life, reality,’ Nanette spoke gently but seriously. ‘If you are seeking Armand through Tristan, who resembles him, you could both be hurt. I hope you realize that not all men take their kissing lightly.’

  Roslyn glanced down at the clenched hands in her lap, and wished it were possible to hide all alone with the wounds other people seemed to want to tear open all the time, ‘I wouldn’t use Tristan for a probe,’ she said a little sadly. ‘He’s far too nice for that sort of treatment - anyway, I’m just a child to him.’

  Roslyn raised her rain-clear eyes. ‘He kissed me because he feels sorry for me, he said so. And I let him kiss me because sometimes I feel a little sorry for myself.’

  ‘I did not mean to upset you, petite.’ A thin, veined hand closed over Roslyn’s. ‘It is that I have a concern for my young. I fuss in case life should bruise them, though I know full well that life is all the richer for the knocks we suffer and survive.’

  The elderly woman and the young one faced each other for a long moment, then Nannette said briskly: ‘Go to my toilet table, child, and fetch me that circular box. I have something in it which you might like, a trifle of no more use to an old woman.’

  The trinket box stood on tiny feet, and Nanette delved into it and brought to light a bracelet set with panels that represented scenes from French fables. ‘I was given this when I was about sixteen, and now I should like you to have it. It is winsome, no?’ Nanette smiled and clipped the bracelet about Roslyn’s wrist.

  ‘It’s charming, Nanette,’ colour had run back into Roslyn’s cheeks, ‘but I don’t know that I ought to let you give it to me.’

  ‘It is given,’ Nanette said with decision. ‘It never appealed to my daughter, whose mondaine tastes, surprisingly, were not proof against the rugged looks and charm of the British planter whom she married. I saw them marry with trepidation, but thank heaven the marriage was a success. They soon had a child, Duane, and I knew that he would keep the gay, lively mind and body of my Celeste fully occupied. It would, you understand, petite, have been hard to bear had I thought her unhappy all those miles from me. She was much younger than my sons, the girl child my husband had always wanted, so her happiness meant all that much more to me.’

  Nanette’s eyes brooded on Roslyn’s face, as though the wide eyes and youthful features reminded her a little of her daughter’s, before she had married and gone away.

  ‘Thank you for the bracelet, Nanette.’ Roslyn leant forward and kissed the fine, pampered skin that stretched like silk over the beautiful bones of Nanette’s face. ‘I shall treasure it always.’

  ‘Treasure what?’ said a voice, and in through the door strode Duane Hunter, who had evidently come to collect in person the member who was holding up the expedition into El Kadia. Roslyn realized now that she had heard the car horn being sounded, but she had been absorbed in Nanette’s confidences about Celeste.

  She tensed, for a pair of tawny-green eyes were fixed on the bracelet her fingers leapt to cover. What inadequate cover! The enamelled panels glinted between the slimness of her fingers.

  ‘I have just given Roslyn a keepsake,’ his grandmother informed him. ‘Well, it makes a nice change, Duane, to see you in civilized clothing. Enjoy this week-end. Relax, and forget the plantation.’

  ‘I may do just that.’ He grinned and bent over his grandmother, landing a kiss where Roslyn’s lips had shyly rested. Roslyn hovered by the door. She wanted to dash away down to the car, but that would look childish. So she waited, smiled a nervous good-bye at Nanette, and preceded out of the door the tall figure in tropical tussore, a tawny silk shirt thrown open at the throat that was several shades tawnier.

  They were half-way along the corridor when he caught at her left wrist and took a long, hard look at the panelled bracelet. She didn’t look at him, but there was a glint of undersilver through her dark lashes as she felt the savage aliveness of his fingers. It was frightening that a man could be so alive, filled with the kind of power that left a woman with only her wit to defend her.

  ‘Pretty,’ he murmured. ‘The bracelet, I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Her chin tilted. ‘You said I was after perquisites, didn’t you, Mr. Hunter?’

  He stared down at her with narrowed eyes, then she gave a gasp as his grip tightened and she was brought up against him, her imprisoned hand an inch from his face. ‘No one could be as innocent as you look,’ he crisped. ‘Only a fool, or a child, and you’re neither.’

  ‘Let me go!’ She struggled for release, wildly, helpless as a bird caught by a cat. ‘You’re never happy unless you’re picking on me! I - I suppose you’d like me to drop out of this week-end trip, but I’m not going to - just to please you.’

  ‘I want you doing nothing to please me, Miss Brant.’ He gave a derisive laugh. ‘Whether or not you come on this trip makes no difference to me. Why should it? You’re not my type.’

  ‘You’re not mine, either,’ she blazed back. ‘You’re arrogant, insulting, and just about the easiest man to hate that I’ve ever met!’

  ‘Have you met plenty, besides Armand?’ he drawled.

  ‘I - don’t know.’ Her wrist was hurting from trying to drag it free of his grip. ‘I could be anything, all the things you say, but there is one thing for sure. The aversion is mutual, Duane Hunter. I hate you touching me and coming anywhere near me and I pity any woman who thinks you worth loving. You seem to think you’re the only human being who ever got hurt or disillusioned. Lots of people love someone and end up without them through one cause or another, but I hope they don’t all get like you. Hard and bitter, and without charity. Charity may be a cold word to some, but I’m grateful to Nanette for offering hers to me. It comes straight from her heart, and I’d sooner be struck down than play Judas to so kind and generous a person.’

  Roslyn tossed back her head and a finger of sunlight poked through a window and stroked the fair, cropped hair above her jade-grey eyes. Her cheeks and her throat were hollowed, holding shadow. Her skin was pale, but her lips seemed aflame from the words that came out of them.

  ‘Nanette knows about love as I don’t think you do, Mr. Hunter. How frail we are in love, yet how strong. How blessed if we don’t let the petty things destroy the great; how cursed if we let them destroy the beauty. I have no memory at the moment, and that is the truth, but I want to remember. I want to know what it felt like to have love, even if I have now lost it.’

  In the silence, held close to him as she was, she felt the beating of his heart. Such intimacy was unbearable, and when the horn of the Renault suddenly blared, shattering the silence, she tore free of him and ran - down the stairs, across the hall, out into the courtyard and the sunshine where Tristan s
tood awaiting her.

  He smiled and held out a hand to her. Isabela was already in the wagon, up front, powdering her nose and looking proud and distant as Queen Nefertiti. Roslyn slid along the roomy back seat of the wagon and watched as Duane took his place in front of the driving wheel. Doors slammed. Tristan was installed beside herself, Isabela was casting a glance at Duane’s brown profile as he started the Renault and the shadow of the horseshoe arch was over them, then the green and gold shadows of the plantation as they sped along the car track.

  Once out of the plantation, the sun was brazen over the desert, and in a while they passed an encampment of black tents pitched about a water-hole. There were camels chewing harsh-looking thorn as though it was the softest grass, and a herd of mixed sheep and goats. Women clustered with jars about the water-hole, their dark Bedouin faces uncovered. A robed man butchered meat near one of the long, low, hair tents, and there hung over the scene a Biblical quality, unchanged down the centuries.

  Mary and Joseph might have passed such an encampment on their journey, Roslyn thought, and been given hospitality by people who looked exactly like those.

  Isabela remarked that real Arabs were certainly not like the sheiks in novels and films.

  ‘I should hope not!’ Duane said. ‘Those are real men, and women, hewn out of the fire and ice of their land. In actual fact, a desert sheik is little more than a shepherd, a nomad wanderer who opens his eyes for the first time in a hair tent, who marries a girl of his own tribe and rarely takes a second wife, let alone a third or a fourth. The sky is his roof, the sand his floor, his bed, and finally his last resting place.’

  ‘You talk about the men of the desert as though you envy them, Duane.’ Isabela’s laugh was a low, mocking peal. ‘Don’t tell me that such a life would appeal to you?’

  ‘Of course it would appeal to him,’ Tristan broke in, winking at Roslyn. ‘Duane has a very primitive disposition, have you not, mon ami?’

  ‘Sure,’ there was a hint of a smile in Duane’s voice. ‘I mixed with forest Indians right from a boy and learned from them how to trap fish, track game, and ride the wild waters in a native skiff. It was quite a life ... while it lasted.’

  ‘Any regrets about leaving?’ Tristan was getting out cigarettes. Roslyn shook her head, but Isabela - who did not smoke on account of her voice - took one for Duane, lit it between her ruby lips and put it between his. A plume of smoke wafted over his shoulder, mingling with the smoke Tristan was making.

  ‘Sometimes I get a yen to smell again the smoky balls of wild rubber,’ Duane admitted. ‘To sink my teeth in a fat papaya and eat fish cooked in wild banana leaves. In one section of the plantation out there we grew tonka beans -God, the perfume of them! There were pacas to hunt, spider-quiet. And caymen. Tail of alligator is quite a dish.’

  ‘Duane, really!’ Isabela was looking disgusted.

  ‘It’s true, my dear.’ The drawl was back in his voice. ‘The jungle is the Devil’s Paradise and I was well at home in it. I revelled in the roar of rain like a waterfall, the thud of pagan feast drums, and the way the setting sun turned the rivers to wine. “Llora, llora, corozón” sang the Indians.’

  ‘And what are the charming words supposed to mean?’ Isabela asked.

  ‘ “Weep, weep, my heart.” ’ Sitting behind them Roslyn saw their eyes meet and hold, then his cynical smile cleaved the copper of his cheek. ‘Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it, the things we get to care about? Those rain forests were hot as hell more often than not, yet there were times when they thrilled like an angel’s kiss.’

  Roslyn couldn’t help staring at those two in front of her, even though it was like peeping in through a window at two people who were kissing. Isabela’s kiss would not be angelic, surely? She was a spoiled and tempestuous beauty, the sort to demand of the man she married her way of life. Those two would certainly have to learn to compromise, Roslyn thought, if the alchemy between them was growing into love.

  ‘Did you witness any pagan rites during your years in the bush?’ Tristan inquired of his cousin.

  ‘Several,’ Duane threw over his shoulder. ‘Plenty of witchcraft flourishes in the jungle, and it’s easy enough to believe in rain gods and fire spirits when the mae da lua cries weirdly from the treetops at nightfall and the river holds the moon. How she shakes, Jaci the Moon Goddess possessed at the height of her beauty by the Devil River.’ ‘Sounds fascinating,’ Tristan murmured. ‘Duane, I cannot remember you talking about all this before.’ ‘Perhaps I had to be in the right mood,’ Duane shrugged.

  ‘A relaxed mood, minho cara,’ Isabela purred. ‘Does it not feel good to be unchained from your galley-bench?’ He gave a laugh, then stretched his hand to the map-compartment and took something out of it. Isabela gave a small gasp, then Duane tossed the object over his shoulder, presumably for Tristan to catch, but it landed in Roslyn’s lap.

  A shrunken head the size of a black-brown orange, lank hair'hanging about the sealed eyelids, the lips sewn into a grimace. Tristan took hold of it by the hair and held it aloft.

  ‘Mon dieu!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is it real?’

  ‘The genuine thing.’ Duane glanced round with a quick grin, his eyes on Roslyn. He added for her benefit alone: ‘That’s what I’d have looked like, had the Jivaro taken my head for a tsantsa.’

  ‘Why do they do it, Duane?’ Tristan asked. ‘Do they still take heads and shrink them?’

  ‘Occasionally,’ Duane replied. ‘It’s done to satisfy family or tribal honour, and each man who takes a head must, in due course, have his taken by revenging members of the beheaded one’s family. So it goes on, like blood feuds out here in the desert, and vendettas in places like Corsica and Sicily. We all know these practices are dying out, but they aren’t quite dead.’

  ‘Do they ever take female heads?’ Isabela voiced a question which Roslyn was dying to ask.

  ‘No, women are safe in that respect,’ he chuckled. ‘Actually, Indian women don’t lead a bad sort of life, that is if they steer clear of male magic when it’s practised The moko-moko caught near an all-male gathering, especially with the chiefs and medicine-men present, is asking for trouble. Apart from that, they are courted and loved in a way a lot of civilized women might envy. What young bachelor in our society would submit to being bound in a sack of fire-ants in order to test his endurance for the state of marriage?’

  ‘Nom d’un chien, but that sounds a bit drastic,’ Tristan laughed. ‘Were I an Indian, I would remain a bachelor.’

  ‘What if you were madly in love, mon ami?’ Isabela turned round and fixed a pair of brilliantly curious eyes on Tristan’s face. ‘Is not love worth some suffering?’

  ‘I really wonder about that,’ he replied. ‘It seems to me that in our society suffering has little value, and that a careless regard for the feelings of others is far more rewarded. In short, the sensitive people, who are more capable of all the better feelings, including love, are the ones who receive less and deserve more. No wonder they are now girding themselves in the armour of ambition. Who can blame them? They are being forced into it in order to survive in a so-called civilized world.’

  ‘Tristan,’ Isabela opened wide her eyes, and her smile was mock-hurt, ‘what a lecture! Is it for me alone, or is Duane included?’

  Tristan’s eyes dwelt on his cousin’s bronze head, then he smiled in his wry, Gallic way and handed Isabela the tsantsa. In a way it was a significant gesture. The head to you, it seemed to say; the heart you may yet have to win.

  Roslyn glanced out of the window beside her and saw that they were leaving the sand-seas behind them. They rolled away, lost suddenly under the immense arch of the Bab el Kadia, the gate of the city, set in sun-scaled walls that stretched right and left like the huge ramparts of a fortress community.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEIR Arab hotel was rather like an old castle to look at. It was picturesque, but there was no running water and it had to be brought to their rooms in earthenware jars.

&
nbsp; Roslyn liked the hotel right away, for it was near the Temcina Lake, precariously perched on cliffs that tumbled in heaps and mounds to the shore. She could see the lake from the balcony of her room, a glittering expanse of cool water with an island set in the middle of it like a green gem. Roslyn stood drowning in the sight. She felt a longing to plunge into the water, and knew that she must be able to swim.

  She closed her eyes and fought to recapture the tangible sensation of cleaving water ... moonlit water, stars in it, and someone running along a shore holding out a hand to her. Roslyn put out her own hand, but met only emptiness. Her eyes flew open, and her dazed glance fell to the courtyard below.

  Duane Hunter stood with legs wide-planted beneath her balcony, his jacket discarded, the sun biting into his throat and arms.

  He was studying her with curious eyes ... Juliet on her balcony, holding out a supplicating hand. Colour rushed into her cheeks, and she turned into her room, where she stood for long moments with her hands pressed to her temples, wrenching at the closed door in her mind ... the door that had opened a fraction and then closed again. She had half-remembered something -and it was connected with a lake!

  She had a wash, then joined the others downstairs. Her heart was pounding, her cheeks were faintly flushed with excitement. That night when the others were in their rooms, safely asleep, she intended to go down to the lake-shore. There would be a moon so she would be able to find her way down the cliffs. Alone by the water, moon-dappled, she might come to grips with that elusive figure, running towards her with outstretched hand.

  ‘I think all four of us need to wet our throats before we go into town,’ Duane said, and a waiter brought cool drinks to them at a table under the lime-flowers of the patio.