A.D. 30, Page 3

  “Why?” he demanded.

  Tears sprang to my eyes and I wanted to join him in grief, but I could not move, much less raise Nasha from the dead.

  He hurled his accusations at the heavens. “Why have you cursed me with this death? I am a beast hunted by the gods for bringing this curse to the sands. I am at the mercy of their vengeance for all of my sins!”

  He was heaping shame on himself for allowing Nasha to die in his care.

  “You have cursed me with a thousand curses and trampled my heart with the hooves of a hundred thousand camels!”

  He grabbed his shirt with both hands and tore it to expose his chest. “I, Rami bin Malik, who wanted only to live in honor, am cursed!”

  I was torn between anguish at Nasha’s passing and fear of Rami’s rage.

  “Why?” he roared.

  “Father…”

  He spun to me, face wet with tears. For a moment he looked lost, and then rage darkened his eyes.

  “She’s dead!” His trembling finger stretched toward me. “You have killed her!”

  “No!” Had he heard of my visit? Surely not.

  “You and the whore who was your mother! And Aretas! And all of this cursed desert!”

  I could not speak.

  He shoved his hand toward Nasha’s body. “Her gods have conspired to ruin me. I curse them all. I curse Dushares and Al-Uzza. I spit on Quam. All have brought me calamity.”

  “No, Father… please… I serve you first, before all the gods.”

  He stared at me, raging. “Six months! You have been here only six months and already the gods punish me.”

  “She was a sister to me!” I said. “I too loved Nasha…”

  “Nasha?” His face twisted with rage. “Nasha bewitched me in pleading I take you in. Today I curse Nasha and I curse the daughter who is not my own. Do you know what you have done?”

  I was too numb to fully accept the depth of his bitterness. He mourned the threat to his power, not Nasha’s passing?

  “Aretas will now betray me. All that I have achieved is now in jeopardy for the pity I have taken on the shamed.”

  And so he made it clear. My fear gave way to welling anger and I lost my good sense.

  “How dare you?” I did not stop myself. “Your wife lies dead behind you and you think only of your own neck? What kind of honor lies in the chest of a king such as you? It was you who planted your seed in my mother’s womb! I am the fruit of your lust! And now you curse me?”

  My words might have been made of stone, for he stood as if struck.

  “And you would rule the desert?” I demanded. “Shame on you!”

  My father was no king, for no Bedu would submit to a king. Yet by cunning and shrewdness, by noble blood and appointment of the tribal elders, he was as powerful as any king and ruled a kingdom marked not by lines in the sand, but by loyalty of the heart.

  His silence emboldened me. “Rami thinks only of his loss. I see Maliku in you.”

  “Maliku?”

  “Is he not your true son? Is not my son only a bastard in your eyes?”

  “Silence!” he thundered.

  But I had robbed the worst of his anger. Misery swallowed him as he stared at me.

  He staggered to the bed, sank to his knees, and lifted his face to the ceiling, sobbing. I stood behind, my anger gone, cheeks wet with tears.

  Slowly his chin came down and he bowed his head, rocking over Nasha’s corpse.

  “Father…”

  “Leave me now.”

  “But I—”

  “Leave me!”

  Choked with emotion, I took one last look at Nasha’s stiffening form, then rose and walked away. But before I could leave, the door swung open. There in its frame stood Maliku, Rami’s son.

  Fear cut through my heart.

  Even so early in the day, he was dressed in rich blue with a black headdress, always eager to display his pride and wealth. He had Rami’s face, but he was leaner and his lips thinner over a sparse beard. His eyes were as dark as Rami’s, but I imagined them to be empty wells, offering no life to the thirsty.

  He looked past me and studied Nasha’s still form. I saw no regret on his face, only a hint of smug satisfaction.

  Maliku’s stare shifted from Nasha and found me. In a sudden show of indignation, his arm lashed out like a viper’s strike. The back of his hand landed a stinging blow to my cheek.

  I staggered, biting back the pain.

  His lips curled. “This is your doing.”

  Neither I nor my father protested his show of disfavor.

  “Take your bastard son and offer yourself to the desert,” he said, stepping past me to address our father. “She must leave us. We must place blame for all to see.”

  Father pushed himself to his feet, making no haste to respond. Instead, as a man gazing into the abyss of his doom, he stared at Nasha’s body. Maliku was within his rights. But surely he saw my son as a threat to his power, I thought. This was the root of his bitterness.

  “Father—”

  “Be quiet, Maliku,” Rami said, turning a glare to his son. “Remember whom you speak to!”

  Maliku glared, then dipped his head in respect.

  Rami paced, gathering his resolve. If Maliku had been younger my father might have punished him outright for his tone, but already Maliku was powerful in the eyes of many. Truly, Rami courted an enemy in his own home.

  “Father, if it please you,” Maliku said, growing impatient. “I only say…”

  “We will honor Nashquya at the shrine today,” Rami said, cutting him short. “In private. No one must know she has passed. We cannot risk the Thamud learning of this. They are far too eager to challenge me.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Then you will take ten men, only the most trusted. Seek out the clans west, south, and north. Tell them to return to Dumah immediately. I would have them here in three days.”

  I could see Maliku’s mind turning behind his black eyes.

  “Three days have passed since they left the great fair,” he said. “It will take more than three days to reach them and return.”

  “Do I not know my own desert? It’s our good fortune that many of our tribe are still so close. They will be traveling slowly, fat from the feasts. Take the fastest camels. Let them die reaching the clans if you must. Leave the women and the children in the desert. Return to me in three days’ time with all of the men.”

  Father was right. Ordinarily the Kalb would have been spread over a vast desert, each clan to its own grazing lands.

  “If it please you, Father, may I ask what is your purpose in this?”

  Rami pulled at his beard. “I would have all of the Kalb in Dumah to pay their respects and mourn the passing of their queen.”

  “Their queen? The Bedu serve no queen.”

  “Today they serve a queen!” Rami thundered, stepping toward Maliku. “Her name is Nashquya and her husband is their sheikh and this is his will!”

  “They are Bedu—”

  “She is your mother! Have you no heart?”

  Maliku’s face darkened.

  “I would have my Kalb in Dumah!” Rami said. “To honor my wife!”

  Rami stared at Maliku, then turned and walked to the window overlooking Dumah. When he spoke his voice was resolute.

  “Bring me all of that might. Bring me twenty thousand Kalb. Bring every man who would save the Kalb from the Thamud jackals who circle to cut me down.”

  “You are most wise.” Maliku paused, then glanced at me. “I would only suggest that she too be sent away.”

  “You will tell me how to command my daughter?”

  Maliku hesitated. “No.”

  A moment of laden silence passed between them.

  “Leave me,” Rami said.

  We both turned to go.

  “Not you, Maviah.”

  I remained, confused. Maliku cast me a glare, then left the room, not bothering to close the door.

  Rami, heavy with thoug
ht, turned away from the window. His world had changed this day, in more ways than I could appreciate, surely.

  When he finally faced me, his jaw was fixed.

  “I see in Maliku a thirst only for power. Jealousy, not nobility, steers his heart. Surely you see it.”

  I hesitated but was honest. “I see only what you see.”

  “My son is a selfish man who drinks ambition the way his stallions drink the wind at a full gallop.”

  I still did not understand why he wanted to speak to me thus, for he rarely uttered a word to me.

  “You will remain here in the fortress, beyond the sight of all.”

  I bowed my head. “Yes, Father.”

  “If there is any trouble, you will seal yourself in the chamber of audience with your son and answer to no one but me. Do you understand?”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  “You will know if it comes. But you must do this. Swear it to me.”

  As his daughter I had no choice. “Of course.”

  “It is of utmost importance. The fate of all the Kalb may depend upon it.”

  He stared at me for a long time, then dismissed me with a nod.

  “Leave me then. I would be with my wife.”

  I hurried from Nasha’s chamber and returned to my room, barely aware of my surroundings, too stunned to cry.

  Little Rami, now awake, lay where I’d left him, staring in wonder at the dawning of another day. He smiled, then squirmed and fussed enough to let me know that he was hungry. Light streamed in from the window, but the room felt cold. So I lit an oil lamp, gathered my son in my arms, and let him suckle.

  I could feel my life flowing into him as I stroked his cheek and cherished the heat of his small body against mine. In his world there was no knowledge of death. In mine, it seemed to be all I knew. For my son’s life, I would die.

  Then tears came again, silently slipping down my cheeks. I could not stop them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TWO NIGHTS had passed since Rami tended to Nasha’s passing. I was not permitted to pay my respects at the shrine, but was confined to the fortress. Maliku had gone to find the Kalb after Nasha’s private funeral and the palace Marid was like a tomb, portending the fate of me and my son. Nasha’s sweet voice, once ringing through the halls with delight, now whispered only in my dreams.

  Father had taken up residence in his tent just outside of Dumah with five hundred of his closest men. He often served tea to guests from the deep desert there, rather than in the fortress. Only after tea had been shared did they partake of the Bedu’s greatest pleasure: the sharing of the news.

  Where do you come from? Who have you seen? Which clan is raiding? I have seen the tracks of the Tayy, seventy camels strong, traveling east from the well at Junga. My brother has seen a caravan in the west, south of Tayma, plundered by the Qudah tribe. He says more than twenty were killed and over a hundred camels laden with frankincense taken.

  And then others’ opinions joined these words, each man explaining with unyielding passion his particular point of view, often the same view already expressed but in new words, for every man had a right to be heard.

  A hundred times during those two days alone in the palace Marid, I imagined what news might be passing in my father’s tent now. No possibility offered me great hope.

  The Bedu men told their stories much as they told their news, over and over with great theatrics and without tiring of the same tale, the rest listening as if they’d never heard it. The guest and host would exchange accounts of a time when the locust swarms blackened the sky and stripped the grazing lands of all that was green in Mesopotamia, plunging the region into famine. Or when they and their sons showed their great courage by standing up to a dozen of the Thamud in a raid that would have robbed them of all their women and camels. Surely embellishment was the norm.

  But I feared that the stories told of what would soon transpire in Dumah, regardless of the outcome, would have no need for exaggeration.

  That trouble came late in the afternoon. I was again high above the Marid, where I often retreated with my son to be in the open air but out of sight. Below the fortress, Dumah slept in silence. I saw the dust then, coming from the east, a silent line of boiling sand stretching across the eastern flat as far as I could see.

  A storm, I thought.

  Then I saw a speck leading that line. And I knew that I wasn’t seeing a storm at all. I was seeing a single camel followed by an army of camels. Far too many to be the Kalb, who would have come from all directions.

  East. This was the Thamud. Saman bin Shariqat, ruler of the Thamud, was coming to Dumah.

  War!

  My breath caught in my throat and I stared at the scope of that army, unable to move.

  A call from the slope east of the city jerked me back to myself. Father’s lookouts had seen. The call was taken up by hundreds as the warning spread throughout Dumah.

  First a dozen, then a hundred and more of Rami’s men, mounted on horseback, raced down the slope, toward the trees at the edge of the oasis. They would engage the Thamud there, under the cover of the date palms.

  Surrounded now by the sounds of great urgency, I held my son tight and flew down the stairs, thinking only of sealing myself in the chamber of audience as directed by my father.

  I hurried down the hall clinging to little Rami, who managed a little laugh. But something in him shifted when I crashed into the chamber of audience, barred the door, and ran to the window. There he began to cry.

  I was too stunned by the scene unfolding below to calm him. Like a stampeding herd, a thousand Thamud camels thundered over the crest toward the date palms of the oasis. Then more, flying the yellow-and-red banners of their tribe, flowing like the muddy waters of the great Nile in Egypt.

  They were armed with sword and bow and ax and lance, bucking atop lavishly draped camels. The Thamud were a sea of flesh and color intent upon death.

  Such a force would have quickly slaughtered Rami’s small army had he remained in the open desert. Only by drawing the Thamud into the palm groves and the city itself could his Kalb leverage any advantage of cover.

  By riding horses, the Kalb held speed over the Thamud, who’d needed camels to cross the softer sands as quickly as they had. On the harder ground of the city, Rami’s horses could outmaneuver the larger beasts.

  My father held only these small advantages. How could they possibly offset the superior numbers now swarming into Dumah?

  Two days had passed since Nasha’s death. The Thamud stronghold in Sakakah lay a hard day’s ride east, requiring a full day to reach it and another to return. Now I understood Rami’s insistence that Nasha’s passing remain secret. The Thamud had surely already received Aretas’s blessing to vie for power if his bond with Rami was ever broken.

  And now word of that break had reached the Thamud.

  Maliku.

  It only stood to reason. If the Thamud crushed Rami and the Kalb here in Dumah, the Thamud would give Maliku power as the new leader of the Kalb. Though he would not be a sheikh, his sword would enforce his power among his own people in alliance with the Thamud.

  I stepped away from the window, heart in my throat, pacing, bouncing my son in my arms.

  “You’re safe, Rami. Hush, hush… your mother’s here. You’re safe.”

  He calmed.

  The chamber of audience was large enough to hold a hundred men seated on the floor facing the seat of honor. The ornate camel saddle was placed upon a rise and covered by the finest furs and colorful woven pillows, which provided as much comfort as beauty. Drapes of violet silk hung from the walls, and the room was usually lit by a dozen oil lamps set upon stands.

  But they were all dark now, like the rest of the fortress, lit only by the waning sunlight.

  I could hear far more than I could see, for camels protest as much in battle as they do rousing from slumber. Their roars reverberated through the city without pause. Shrill battle cries from a thousand Thamud t
hroats accompanied that thunderous camel herd. The punctuating sounds of men and beasts in the throes of death pierced my heart.

  The eastern slope was strewn with fallen mounts, camels all of them, taken by Kalb arrows, for the Kalb are known for the bow above all weapons. The sand was weeping blood already.

  A Kalb horse raced up a street near the center of the oasis, rider bent low over his mount’s neck. No camel could match such speed. And none did, because the fighting was sequestered in the groves along the eastern edge of Dumah, where Rami tested the limits of his every advantage.

  I shifted my gaze back to the desert and watched as a camel carrying two riders—one facing forward with reins and one facing backward with full use of his hands—galloped across the slope’s open sand. The Thamud warrior at the rear slung arrows into the palms one after the other without pause. Where the arrows landed, I could not see from the palace, but I knew the Kalb were as wise as they were fierce and would not place themselves in the open for arrows to find easily.

  A single arrow embedded itself in that warrior’s neck, and he toppled unceremoniously from the camel’s hump to land in a heap, grasping frantically at the wound. His body went still within moments. I could not deny the thrill of triumph that coursed through my veins at the sight.

  And yet he was only one among far too many.

  It was the first time I’d witnessed war. In Egypt I’d seen many fight hand to hand with blade or mace or hammer or net, though mostly in training, for my master traded in warriors who fought in an arena for Rome. A brutal business. Johnin, the father of my son, had been among the best, and he had shown me how to defend myself.

  But that savagery could not compare to the butchery in Dumah.

  Rami would retreat into the city, I thought. The Thamud would abandon their camels. The battle would be taken to the ground. And then to the palace Marid, where I stood.

  I closed the shutter, rested my back against the wall, and slid to my seat, uttering a prayer to Isis, who had always failed to listen but might yet, even now. For my sake as much as my son’s, I pulled open my dress and allowed Rami to suckle.

  Surely my father’s noble rule was about to end. Surely the Kalb would not prevail. Surely fate was landing its final, crushing blow.