I pulled myself upright. But it was too late. He was on me. He snatched the rifle from my slack hands, checked the empty magazine, kicked it under the bed, and with a vicious swing of the hand to the side of my head sent me sprawling across the bed just as the grey cat, spitting furiously, erupted from the blankets like a rocket on blast-off, and cleared me with a centimetre to spare and every hair on its body brushing my face.
I screamed. Grafton shouted something and I think he made a grab for me, but I had gone beyond fear or even thought of him. Caught up in my own private nightmare, fighting not the cat but my own terror, I struck out at him with feet and hands as I jack-knifed away towards the far side of the bed.
From the garden outside came a sudden volley of noise, a hoarse shout, a scrabble of racing paws, then the inhuman yell of a terrified cat, drowned in the wild exciting tumult of hounds sighting a kill. The cat shot back into the room, a hissing grey streak, and after it the salukis, full cry, with a broken leash trailing from one collar, and Nasirulla in loud pursuit.
The cat leaped for the bed hangings. The hounds saw it, and hurled themselves after it. The heavy chair went flying, crashed into the table, and toppled, smashing the lamp in a sprayed arc of oil. The flame ran along it like ball-lightning. Grafton yelled something, dragged a blanket from the bed, jumped clear down the dais steps, dodging the dogs, slipped in the burning oil and went down, striking his head hard on the stone edge of the table, Over my head the cat leaped like a silver bird for the high window sill, and was gone.
It all seemed to happen in seconds. The flames ran, clawed out, rippled, caught the bed hangings, and went licking up them in great lapping gulps of flame. I rolled off the bed, fighting clear of the curtains, and hurled myself into the quiet dimness of the corridor beyond. The last thing I saw as the arras swung back behind me was the Arab bending to drag Grafton clear towards the other door.
The hounds came with me. Sofi, whining with fear, scrambled through the arras and went tumbling anyhow down the steps. The dog was at the foot of the staircase already. I slammed the door and raced down after them.
‘Here!’ I called breathlessly. ‘This way! Here!’ And we ran on, down the curved corridor, past the room where poor Halide lay, through the still air already sharp with smoke – and there was the Prince’s Door.
My hands were shaking, and twice the dogs, leaping in eager fear, shoved me aside before I could lift the heavy latch. Then I had it open, and we were through. It swung easily, massive and silent. It might make a lock on that dead air, and check the fire. I slammed it shut and drove the latch home. Then turned, to find that there was fire outside as well …
Or so I thought, for one heart-stopping moment, as I saw the outer passage lit and flickering before me. Then I saw why. This, too, had been illuminated for the night’s work. The ancient brackets to either side of the Prince’s Door held makeshift torches which flared suddenly, red and smoking. It must have been this smoke I had smelled in the corridor as I ran.
I hung there, irresolute, gasping, while the hounds whined and shivered and stayed close. The caravan was due soon, and presumably by the postern. But I had heard Halide say that the postern was locked and the key out of it. It would have to be the main gate, and chance it.
I ran up the passage to my right, and had stumbled perhaps some twenty yards on the rough and ill-lit cobbles when Sofi whined again and I heard, clearly ahead of me, a turmoil of shouts from the main court. I stopped dead. Of course they would all be there: Grafton, Lethman, Nasirulla, Jassim – go that way, and I would run into them all. What was more, if they had any hopes of salvaging their precious cargo, this was the way they would come at any moment now. And even with the whole rotten place going up like tinder round them I wouldn’t have betted a pin on any of them doing other than throw me straight back into the flames.
I ran back to the door for the Seraglio stairs.
It opened, and we tumbled through. Darkness dropped over us like a velvet drape, stifling, silent, terrifying. I shut the door behind me and took two hesitating steps forward, then stumbled over the bottom stair and fell, hurting my shin. One of the dogs whimpered, pressing close. Under the silky coat the hot skin shivered. On my other side a narrow head nudged me, and I felt for the beast’s collar and got to my feet. With one hand on the collar, and the other groping for the handrail on the outer wall of the staircase, I began to fumble my way up the spiral.
‘Show me the way, mates,’ I whispered.
The dogs thrust upwards so eagerly that I realised they could see even here. I wondered if they smelled water. I could almost smell it myself. The thought of that great sheet of water lying above our heads was no longer terrifying; it was the bright, cool promise of safety. With the big hound pulling me, and my left hand groping past the invisible minarets, the cypresses, the singing-birds, I stumbled and panted up the spiral stair. Then the bitch, leaping ahead, pushed open the painted doorway, and the three of us ran out into the night air, and the light.
But the night air smelled of smoke, and the light was red and gold and leaping. I ran with the dogs down the pavilion steps, and paused at the edge of the water.
Through all the buildings to the west of the lake, it seemed, ran the fire. The old rotten wood, crumbling dry, had caught like tinder in the night breeze, and as I stood there, afraid and dismayed, a stream of sparks like a comet’s tail blew clear across the lake and scattered along the arcade to the east, near Charles’s window, and began to burn.
18
‘But not against the flame shall they shade or help you.’
The Koran: Sura LXXVII
One thing the fire did; the place was as bright as day. There was still a chance I could get into the junk-room under the eastern arcade, find the rope, and sling it down from the window before the flames took hold. As for the dogs – as far as I could afford to think about them at all – I certainly couldn’t lower them from the window, rope or no rope, but they were in the safest place in the palace. They had only to take to the water.
I ran on to the bridge, the dogs pressing close to me – so close indeed that when we got to the broken span Sofi jumped first, and Star, pushing forward to follow, shoved against my legs and threw me off balance. I slipped, tried to recover, cried out as I trod on some stone not quite secure, and went into the water.
I suppose it was about four feet deep. I went right in, down under the lilies and the shiny lily-pads and the floating weeds, before I struggled to the surface and stood again, ankle deep in mud and breast deep in water, with my hair streaming weed across my face, and the hounds gazing at me, curious and excited, from the bridge.
Then Sofi, with a little yelp of excitement, plunged in beside me. Star, inevitably, followed. They swam round and round, with little whining barks, splashing and clawing, avid to be near me, and completely ignoring my distracted croaks of command as I tried to push them away among the creaking irises, and began myself to flap and struggle out through the clotted lily-leaves.
But not to the arcade. The few minutes I had lost through my accident had cost me access to the junk-room. Flakes of blazing stuff- straw or rags – had blown across the water and ignited the roof at several more points. Most of it was wooden shingles bleached dry for generations, and covered with creepers already brittle with coming summer heat. The honeysuckle went up like straw, and all along the arcade burning fragments fell or were blown like fire-arrows to start fresh buds of flame. A veil of smoke wavered across the junk-room door.
Even the garden was burning now. Here and there patches of the drier scrub smouldered, and at the tip of one young cypress, where some flying tinder had lodged, a brush of flame hovered like St Elmo’s fire. The smoke was aromatic with blazing herbs.
The northern arcade was still clear, but without the rope I knew the window was useless to me. Useless, too, the gate out into the buildings. There was only one thing for me to do, what the dogs had already made me do, take to the water. But I didn’t think I needed to
do it yet. The island was safe enough for the time being, most of its plants too moist with the abundant water to catch fire easily. And I, thanks to the dogs, was in the same case. I reached the built-up shore and clambered out. The hounds, dripping, scrambled after me. They shook themselves over me straight away, of course, and the water flew from them like showers of liquid fire, so fierce now was the light.
I pushed my way up through the tangle of cool green bushes, and reached the pavilion steps. Smoke swirled in a sudden eddy, making me cough, but it fanned away and the air was clear. I ran up the last steps into the comparative shelter of the pavilion, then my legs gave way at last, and I sat down on the top step, with the dogs crouched close to me for comfort, and we had time to be afraid.
The hounds were really scared now, and huddled close, one on either side of me, shivering. I had an arm round each of them. Now and again some stream of sparks blew across the lake. The sky all around was ringed with fire, vivid tongues and spires and meteors of fire, so that the stars which swarmed thick and glittering overhead seemed cold and infinitely distant. Through the bright heart of the flames shot flashing pulses of blue and purple and green, and the noise they made was like the galloping of wild horses with the wind in their manes. There was very little smoke, and what there was streamed mercifully away in the light winds that fanned the blaze. The lake was a sheet of melted copper, so bright that it hurt the eye, with red and gold and silver flying through the stiff black spears of the irises, till the very water seemed alive, rippling and beating with flame like the sky.
I rubbed my stinging eyes to dispel the illusion. But when I looked again I saw that it was true. The water was moving, and not with the wind. This garden was a pocket of calm overleapt by the winds, but in it, the water was moving, alive with spearhead ripples as the creatures of the garden, driven by the fire, came arrowing towards the island.
The peacocks came first. The two hens flew, clumsily and in panic, from stone to stone of the broken bridge, but the cock, weighted by the magnificence of his springtime tail, came noisily yelling across the open lake, half paddling, half flying, his great useless wings flailing the golden water, his streaming train bedraggled with mud and damp and laying a wake like a VC 10; then the three big birds, oblivious of me and the hounds, raced with hunched and staring feathers up the rocky shore, and clucked to an uneasy roost near us on the marble steps.
The little rock partridges flew more easily. There were seven of them round my feet, fluffy with fear, their bright eyes winking like rubies as they stared at the flames that ringed the garden. In the flashing scarlet light their feathers shone like chased metal. One of them quivered warm against my ankle.
I didn’t even see the squirrels till one slid up the steps beside me and sat bolt upright, chittering and bedraggled, within six inches of Star. Then I realised that the water was full of heads, little black arrow-tips heading for the island. I suppose there were voles and shrews and housemice; I saw shadows galore, darting and squeaking under the evergreens. Rats I certainly saw, big beasts of every shade of grey and black and brown, who eyed us askance with bright intelligent eyes as they shimmied ashore and then streaked for the safety of the shadows. Lizards darted and weaved up the stones like something in an alcoholic’s dream, and I saw two snakes within a handspan of my shoes; they lowered their beautiful deadly heads and went past like smoke, and the dogs never moved, and nor did I. I hadn’t room for fear of them, or they of me; the only thing that mattered was the fire. All of us, rats, birds, snakes, dogs and girl, had a right to that island until the danger was past. The hounds never even moved when one rat went clean across my feet and brushed its way through the silk of Soft’s tail.
A dove fell, out of the sky. The birds of the air were safe enough, they had been blown away on the first hot draught of air. But one grey dove fell, a wing damaged or slightly singed, almost into my hands. It came down like a badly made paper dart, sidelong and drifting, to flutter between my feet, and I leaned forward between the hounds and lifted it, then sat holding it gently. Below my feet I thought that even the water nearest the island boiled and bulged with fish, as the carp crowded away from the bright edges of the lake towards the quiet centre. I could see them just under the surface, bright darts and gleams of gilt and glowing firecoal red.
And above the noise of the galloping flames was the noise of the animals. The dogs whined, the peacocks vented their harsh, scared cry, the partridges crooned in panic, the rats and squirrels chittered and squealed, and I said at distressingly frequent intervals, as I hugged Sofi and Star close to me: ‘Oh, Charles … Oh, Charles … Oh, for heaven’s sake, Charles …’
We hardly even noticed the heavy splash from the north-east corner of the lake, or saw the violent run and ripple of the melted-gold wake as the black head speared straight for the island. I sat and rocked and crooned comfort and held the grey dove and put my cheek to Star’s damp head and wondered how soon I would have to crawl down to the water’s edge and plunge myself in again among the jostling fish.
The creature, whatever it was, had reached the island. It broke from the water, tossed a black lock of hair, and heaved itself ashore. Then it stood upright, and resolved itself into my cousin, dripping and plastered with weed, and dressed in the sodden drapes of what could only be a pair of baggy Arab cotton trousers girded up with a gilt belt, a pair of soggy Arab sandals, and nothing else at all.
He advanced to the bottom of the steps, and regarded me and the menagerie.
‘Eve in the Garden of Eden. Hullo, love. But did you have to set the bloody place on fire to fetch me back?’
‘Charles.’ It was all I could say. The dogs whined and wriggled and stayed close to me, and Sofi waved her wet tail. Half a dozen lizards whipped out of the way as he ran up the steps, and when he stopped in front of us a quail moved a couple of inches aside to get out of the drips. I looked up at him. ‘It wasn’t me,’ I said rather waveringly, ‘the dogs did it. They knocked a lamp over. And I thought you’d gone, they said you’d escaped. They – they had me locked up … oh, Charles, darling …’
‘Christy.’
I don’t remember his moving, but one moment he was standing there in front of me, with the firelight sliding in lovely slabs of rose and violet over his wet skin; the next he was down beside me on the marble floor, and Star was elbowed out of the way, and Charles’s arms were round me and he was kissing me in an intense, starving, furious way that somehow seemed part of the fire, as I suppose it was. They say that this is how fear and relief can take you. I know I went down to him like wax.
We were thrust apart by the wet jealous head of Star, and then Charles, with a laughing curse, rolled aside from Sofi’s eager paws and tongue.
‘Hey, pax, that’s enough – hell’s teeth, will you call your beastly dogs off? Why do you have to hole up with a zoo? Oh, dear heaven, and that peacock’s filthy, and I’ve rolled all over its tail … Shove over, mate, will you? I’ve only known the girl twenty-two years, you might give me a chance. When did I last kiss you, Christabel?’
‘You’d be about ten. You’ve changed.’
‘You must tell me sometime …’
It was a lizard, dropping from the dome, that shook us apart this time. He swore, swiped at it as it shot away unhurt, and sat up.
‘Christy, I love you, and I could spend the rest of my life making love to you and probably will, but if we’re going, the sooner we go the better, nicht wahr?’
‘What? What did you say?’
‘I said we ought to go.’
‘Yes. I love you, too. Did I say?’
‘You made it plain,’ he said. ‘Oh Christy, love … Christy!’
‘What?’
His grip on me changed, as it were, and it was no longer my lover, but my cousin Charles who took me by the shoulders and shook me. ‘Pull yourself together! Darling, are you doped, or what?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘We’ve got to get out of here while there’s still a c
hance!’
‘Oh …Yes, let’s.’ I sat up and blinked at the leaping flames. ‘But how? Unless you can fly? Oh, the sadist you are, you’ve nearly squashed my dove … No, there it goes, thank goodness, it must only have been doped with smoke.’ I started to get up. ‘Mind the squirrel, won’t you?’
He laughed. ‘Is that what it is? Oh, and look at all the dear little rats. Come on!’ He jumped up and pulled me to my feet and held me for a moment, steadying me. ‘Don’t look so scared. We’d be safe enough here, probably, if we had to stay, but it might get a bit hot and uncomfortable before it dies down, so we’ll have a bash at getting out straight away. There’s only one possible way out, and we’d best be quick about it.’
‘What way? We’ll never get down from the window now, because we’d never get at the rope, and I couldn’t make it without one, I really couldn’t—’
‘It’s all right, darling, I didn’t mean the window. I meant the postern.’
‘But the corridor’ll be going like a torch! The fire started in the Prince’s room, you know.’
‘Even so, I doubt if it will. The shaft back there—’ nodding at the painted door – ‘would act as a chimney if the underground passage really were going up, and it shows no sign of it. Come and let’s look.’
He pulled the door open cautiously. The smell of smoke was no stronger here than elsewhere, and the spiral shaft was pitch dark. Behind me, Sofi whined deep in her throat, and I made a comforting sound and touched her. ‘You’ll come too. Don’t worry.’
My cousin turned his head. ‘Was the big door shut, the bronze one to the Prince’s corridor?’
‘Yes, I shut it. I came that way. I thought it would seal off the draught.’
‘You have your moments, don’t you? And the air in there was so dead that it may only be burning slowly down from the Prince’s room. We’ll have to try it, anyway.’