‘But this is the rare moss Johara told me about,’ Julia exclaimed animatedly, ‘I am sure of it, the one which she says has special healing qualities. How on earth did you know about it, far less where to find it?’
They had ridden out early from their encampment at the Little Zazim to this place which even Azhar had had some difficultly in locating. He smiled as Julia gazed at the thick reddish-brown slime which grew on the stones in the shallow pool with the delight that other women would reserve for jewellery. ‘You seemed excited about it after your last conversation with Johara, so I dispatched someone to find out more from her.’
‘I did not expect—you should not have gone to such trouble on my behalf, especially when you have so many more weighty matters to deal with.’
‘Julia, everyone else causes me nothing but trouble, you are the one person in my life who gives me nothing but pleasure,’ Azhar replied. ‘When you said this rather revolting slime was unique, I knew that it must be very special, and I wanted you to be able to include it in your book.’
‘Daniel’s book.’
He considered this for a moment. There had been a time, not so very long ago, when he had resented Daniel Trevelyan’s ghostly presence, when he could not have cared less about the content of the man’s botanical treatise. Not now. ‘For me, it will always be your book,’ Azhar said, ‘and as such, I want you to make it the best you can possibly make it.’
‘I couldn’t have finished it at all if I had not met you,’ Julia said.
‘Nonsense, you are the most determined woman I have ever met. You would have found a way. If I had not stumbled upon you that day, someone else would have come to your aid. The Zazim is a busy oasis.’
‘I am very, very glad that it was you who stumbled upon me, Azhar. More glad than you will ever know.’
There was a catch in her voice. There was something in her eyes that squeezed his heart. He knew she cared. He did not want to know how much. ‘Will you be comfortable here on your own for today?’ he asked.
He saw her expression reflect the slight brusqueness in his voice. He could see her pondering whether to accept the deliberate change of subject, or whether to pursue her train of thought. When she decided the former, he felt guilt as well as relief. ‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘You know that I can easily lose myself in my sketching, and drawing this moss will tax my ability to its limits. Have you business elsewhere?’
The notion had come to him in the night. He wasn’t at all certain if it was a good idea, and until he knew that, he wasn’t prepared to share it, not even with Julia. ‘I will return in good time for us to ride back to Al-Qaryma before nightfall,’ Azhar said briskly.
Julia didn’t look intimidated, she looked hurt, but once again, unusually, she bit her tongue. He almost wished she would not. ‘That gives me plenty of time to get to work,’ she said brightly.
‘Julia.’
‘Yes?’
He paused. ‘Let me get your drawing materials from the saddlebags.’
* * *
She was settled with her sketchbook and pencil by the side of the small pool when Azhar left, though he was fairly sure she was not as engrossed as she contrived to look, and even more certain he could feel her gaze burning into his back as he headed into the desert. He knew she had come to care for him, and not only as a lover. Her anguish at his plight was obvious, far beyond that of a mere friend. She meant it when she said she wanted to spare him pain. She meant it when she had said, before they set out yesterday, that she would rather sacrifice their last few days together if doing so was best for him and his blasted kingdom. Julia cared. He knew that, of course he knew that, but knowing was one thing, hearing how much she cared—was it cowardly of him to have cut her short?
What was he afraid of? The answer was obvious, but it was not fear which kept him silent, even to himself, on the subject of his own feelings. Duty again, cursed duty. He had no right to feelings. When he married, as he must, he would have to be able to try to love his chosen wife with a clean conscience. He could not care for Julia. He would not allow himself to care for Julia. And so he must not allow Julia to care for him.
So deep in his musings had Azhar been that he had not noticed how far he had travelled. No one knew when the first King had been buried in the Royal City of the Dead, for the epitaphs on the earliest tombs had been worn away by the desert winds. Unlike the mighty pyramids and the vast underground tombs filled with necessities for the afterlife now being excavated in Egypt, Qaryma’s royal dead were buried in simple sarcophagi hewn from the indigenous red rock, one large monument at the centre for the King, his family ranged around him, their final resting places meriting only small markers.
Azhar was familiar with the site, for he had visited his mother’s grave every year. The marker had sat in isolation on the outer edges of the sprawling city of tombs. Now, it was in the shadow of the newest, largest sarcophagus. In death as in life, he thought wryly. Faced with this incontrovertible evidence of his father’s death, sorrow took a wrenching hold of him, squeezing the breath from him. Dropping to his knees and bowing his head, Azhar tried to fight the tears. Kings did not cry.
He read the simple inscription. Kings did not cry, but he was not yet a king. Leaning his head against the warm red rock of his father’s tomb, Azhar wept.
His tears did not persist for long but they cleansed him, and they brought his father closer to him here, in the City of the Dead, than he had ever been in life. ‘I wish that we could have made our peace while you still breathed, but I hope you are listening now,’ Azhar said in a low voice, still husky from emotion, his head bowed as he stood by the tomb. ‘I am sorry for the long silence that existed between us, but it would be to fly in the face of nature to expect anything else from either of us. You called my bluff. I called yours. In that way I am made in your image, Father, but in so many others, I have made myself. I will not be the man you were. I will be a better king. I will try to be a loving husband and father. I will grant my son the freedom you did not grant me. I will allow my son the true freedom to choose.’
The words were a vow. His own solemn oath, to which he would be true even before the oaths he would take at his coronation. Azhar touched the sarcophagus in farewell. He knelt before his mother’s marker and promised once more to make a better husband than his father had. And then he turned away, out of the Royal City of the Dead, to ride his camel back to Julia, knowing now that he would tell her where he had been and why, knowing now that it had been absolutely the right thing to do.
* * *
They returned to the palace in the late afternoon, to be met in the First Court by the Head of the Royal Guards.
‘I am informed that an Englishman crossed the border without official papers,’ Azhar told Julia. ‘The border guards intercepted him and brought him here. I can only assume that the British Consul in Damascus has become concerned by your lengthy absence and has despatched an official to search for you. Does the name Christopher Fordyce mean anything to you?’
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ Julia replied.
‘He is currently being detained in the Second Court, in the waiting room of the Divan, will you accompany me while I interview him?’
‘Of course. I cannot imagine that he can have any connection with me,’ Julia said, following him through the gate to the Second Court. ‘Though I admit it does seem an odd coincidence that Qaryma should have two English visitors in such a short space of time.’
‘We do not have that honour,’ Azhar said with a smile. ‘One of you is Cornish, remember.’
However, Christopher Fordyce appeared more Arabian than English or even Cornish. He looked to be in his late twenties, and was dressed for the desert in a simple cotton tunic and trousers which