She spoke resolutely, staring right into his eyes with such a steady look that Philip felt lost once again.
‘But then . . . why? Why did you want me to risk my life to find this desolate place . . . Just so that I would find what I was looking for?’
The woman nodded.
‘That’s not possible. I don’t believe you. You would have left this place without waiting for me, knowing you’d never see me again?’
She raised her eyes to his and they were moist and so dark that Philip felt seized by sudden dizziness. ‘My life . . . it’s not up to me, Philip,’ she said again.
‘But right now it is up to you. Your beauty is a treasure and you can do as you like. But don’t reject me, I beg of you. If you do, I’ll go right out onto those bastions. I won’t hide and I won’t defend myself. I heard you call my name for the first time,’ he said. ‘Let me say yours, please, now.’
‘Arad.’
‘Arad,’ he repeated, as if he were saying a magical word capable of opening a door that had always been closed to him.
The palms of her hands had been on his chest, but now she let them slip up to his shoulders and around his neck. Philip felt a rush of blood shooting through his veins like a river of fire. He kissed her lips, warm and sweet as fruit in the sun. She responded to his kiss and pressed against him, and Philip trembled with indescribable emotion. He caressed her thighs and her stomach and her magnificent breasts. He undressed her and contemplated her body in the moonlight as she opened her arms to him. He embraced her, awed by the paleness of his skin against her dark beauty.
She climbed on top of his body and towered over him for an instant like a black idol, like a goddess sculpted in basalt. Then she took his hands and placed them on her hips so he could guide their surging dance, long and lingering in the lunar silence. He followed her every move, sought her in every sigh, every shiver. He touched every centimetre of her splendid skin until the slow, majestic roll of her hips turned into a paroxysmal tremor. He responded hard and violent then, inebriated by the odour of that primordial woman, that black Eve born of mystery. He drew her in beneath him and clasped her in a frenetic embrace, sinking into her torrid flesh and escaping the world and the desert and the whitewashed walls of that lonely tower. He fled far, far away, soaring into the light of the moon like a wayfaring spirit, a quivering Pegasus, flying over the dunes and mountains, over the empty silent plains, all the way to the white foam of a remote sea . . . Then he fell, collapsing into her warm dampness and her still-panting breath. He was exhausted, his mind lost in the abyss of her black shining eyes. They slept.
THE DISTANT SOUND of a gallop shook her from a deep sleep and Arad leapt to her knees, limbs taut, like a lioness ready to strike. She ran to the window and saw a long wake of dust with the tips of spears glittering here and there in the moonlight, gun barrels as well. A large purple standard was fluttering in the wind against the light blue of long cloaks. She ran back to the bed, where Philip was still lost in sleep. She shook him hard to wake him. ‘Hurry, you must leave immediately. If they find you here, they’ll kill you.’
‘Who? Who wants me dead? Selznick? He’s been searching for this place just as I have. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? The man who was after me in Aleppo. I’m not afraid of him. I won’t go.’
Arad dragged him to the window. ‘Do you see them? They are the ones who will kill you if you don’t go. I can’t explain it all now, but I swear to you, they’ll kill you without a moment’s hesitation.’
‘I don’t want to lose you again. I’m staying.’
‘They’ll kill me as well. Is that what you want? You must go, Philip! Listen to me. If my destiny allows it, I will search for you and I will find you, wherever you are, because it’s true, I lied to you. I left that jewel so that you would join me here, but I thought I would be alone. Destiny has decided otherwise. Come with me, come right now, I beg of you.’
‘There’s one thing,’ said Philip. ‘I left something in Aleppo, a little silver musical instrument, in my uniform. I have to have it.’
‘Your uniform,’ murmured the woman. ‘I kept it to remember you by, to remember the way you smell . . .’ She rummaged through a sack and Philip heard a silvery ringing. The sistrum shone a moment later between her long fingers.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for saving it for me.’
The galloping was closer now. They could hear pounding hooves, neighing, men shouting.
‘Follow me,’ said Arad.
She led him down a small spiral staircase on the inside wall that ended in a hidden cell closed by a hatch. As Philip was making his way further down, she let the hatch fall behind him and bolted it shut.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘but this is the only way to save your life. Someone will come to open the hatch in two days and you’ll be free. Farewell.’
Philip pounded his fists furiously against the hatch, but no one was there to hear. Arad was already on the upper walkway, leaning over the courtyard, when the gate burst open and a large group of warriors surged in. At their head was Amir.
‘I’ve been deprived of your beauty for too long, Arad,’ he called up in greeting. ‘I couldn’t wait to see you. I hope you are well.’
‘I am well, Amir. And I too am happy to see you.’ She went down to the courtyard as the men drew water for themselves and their horses from the well at its centre.
Amir drew closer. ‘The moment is near, my lady. Five weeks from today the cycle of the constellations will be complete and the light of knowledge will shine resplendent on the Sand of Ghosts and on the Tower of Solitude. The queen will be healed.
‘The time to take the treasure has come. I have already procured an enormous quantity of naphtha from the Caldaean merchants and it is on its way to the sea. A consignment of weapons – the most modern and deadly that money can buy – are arriving from Tartous, and invincible blades are being forged in Damascus as I speak. Now we must take the gold we need to pay for these things. But there is something else you must take from the treasure chamber: the standard of the black queens. We have practised for the trial that awaits us thousands of times. We cannot fail. If you succeed, if your key strikes at the same moment that mine does, the door will open and the standard will be yours. You will perpetuate your dynasty, and I will kneel at your feet, should you wish to cast your eyes upon me.’
‘I thank you, Amir. I’ve awaited your arrival with great longing as well. I will go to my room now and wait for dawn, when you will call me for the trial. Refresh yourself and rest. Allow your men to rest as well. I shall keep vigil alone, and gather all the strength of my mind and of my body. I’ve waited all my life for this moment.’
Amir bowed and returned to his men to give orders for the first light, which would not be long in coming. He retired, then, to a room near Arad’s, to wait for dawn.
INSIDE HIS ROOM, Amir shut the door behind him and then lay a small carpet on the floor. He sat on his heels and opened the little leather satchel hanging from his belt. He took out his key: an arrowhead made of burnished steel, shaped like a star. He had chosen the most difficult for himself because he was certain that he would succeed, so great was his desire to be chosen as the companion of the future queen of Kalaat Hallaki.
Arad and Amir, closed in their separate rooms, never took their eyes off the arrowhead each had laid on a carpet, waiting until the light of the new day would make it shimmer like a diamond, providing the signal that the moment for their test had come.
The rays of the new sun struck the head of the winged horse on top of the tower first, then descended along his chest and his broken wings and moved down the stone walls, slowly, steeping them in pure light. They entered Amir’s room, which faced east, first, and then Arad’s.
Amir and Arad each rose to their feet and took a bow from the wall, fitted the gleaming head onto the shaft of an arrow and hefted it carefully, passing it from hand to hand.
They left their rooms and met at th
e centre of the deserted courtyard, which was still in shadow, and stood facing each other in silence. Amir saw something different in Arad’s gaze, a wavering light, as if her soul, flitting behind her eyes, were troubled. He looked up at the bastions where the sentries were mounting guard at every point along the horizon. He waited until one of his men stepped forward and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He nodded, then turned to the woman and said: ‘Let us go now, Arad. It is time.’
They descended a stairway that led underground. It opened onto a corridor which went towards the centre of the compound. They walked alongside each other in silence, gripping their bows and looking straight ahead, but Arad could still hear Philip’s words in her ears, still feel the shiver of his hands on her skin.
They reached a vast circular room, also built of big blocks of white limestone. Light spilled in from an opening in the ceiling. At the centre of the room was a round stone whose grey colour stood out from the rest of the yellow sandstone floor. Neither raised their eyes so that the glare of the sky would not trouble them. The natural lighting coated the walls with a diffuse liquid glow that was just below the threshold of distinctness, so the only objects that were completely clear were two silver stars set into the wall, level with their eyes, one exactly opposite the other. Arad and Amir exchanged glances and then slowly walked backwards, step by step, until the stars lined up precisely with their right ears.
‘The signal will reach us in a few moments,’ said Amir. ‘Nock your arrow and draw the bowstring.’
He did the same. They were exactly opposite each other, and each could see the tip of the arrow that the other was aiming, as if each were ready to kill the other, aiming directly at the face. Not a bead of sweat touched the brows of the two young people, not a tremor ran through their arms. They were as still as statues, at the supreme height of tension. But Amir, gazing at the woman he loved, felt that she was as distant as a star in the firmament, and Arad felt his torment and her soul was greatly disturbed. They were staring into each other’s eyes, just as they stared at the stars, and somehow, strangely, each could feel, with pain, the emotion crossing the mind and the eyes of the other.
A rifle shot sounded above, shattering the harsh truths of dawn. The two arrows shot out like lightning, each driving deep into the hollow of the star it had been aimed at.
A dull roar exploded as the big circular stone dropped below floor level and moved aside, revealing the sparkling of an immense treasure beneath. Amir descended into the underground chamber and returned with a bronze rod and a standard bearing the emblem of a rampant gazelle. He knelt before Arad, offering the standard up into her hands. ‘You are the last queen of Hallaki, the last of the blood of Meroe. You are the thirtieth black pearl of Kush.’
The rays of the rising sun licked the gold and silver, the bronze and glass, the ivory, the ebony, the gems, the marble, the coins, the jewels. There were statues and idols from ancient Egypt, necklaces that had encircled the necks of the queens of the Nile, breastplates of warriors and conquerors of the Land of the Two Rivers, bracelets and amulets of priests and wizards from Anatolia and Persia, braziers and thuribles that had burned Arabian incense to all the divinities that man had created to his own image and likeness between the Indus and the Pillars of Hercules. There were coins with the symbols of the cities of Hellas, with the effigies of the kings of Macedonia and Syria, of Lydia and Bactriana, with the profiles of the emperors of Rome and Byzantium, with the monograms of Abbasid, Ayyubite and Almoravide caliphs and of the sultans of the Sublime Gate.
The crypt contained the symbols of power and prestige of every civilization, all of which had paid tribute to the standard of the black queens. To do so their leaders had breached familiar boundaries, had left the known world to challenge the unknown. The little kingdom of Kalaat Hallaki had outlived them all.
‘We have succeeded,’ said Arad. ‘Let us take what we need, Amir, and depart as soon as we can. We have a long road ahead of us.’
‘We have succeeded,’ said Amir, ‘and this means that we are made for one another.’ He looked over at her as she stood cloaked in the light of day that poured down from above. He would have given all the treasures of the crypt just to hold her in his arms for a single kiss, but he felt deep down that she was more distant now than on the day he had seen her dive naked into the spring of Hallaki.
ARAD TRIED ALL THAT DAY to find a moment when she could go down to Philip’s cell, to talk to him, to give him hope. It was just not possible. All her time was taken up by the preparations for their journey and, when night fell, the guards swarming over every part of the tower made it impossible to do anything that might seem suspicious.
They left the next morning, before daybreak.
Amir’s warriors were in formation in the courtyard, ready to depart. They had prepared the pack animals, loading them with bags of wheat and barley within which the precious objects from the crypt had been hidden. They had drawn water from the well and filled wineskins and flasks and big clay jugs, which they tied onto the camels’ packsaddles.
Arad appeared dressed as a warrior herself, with a light blue barrakan, a damascened shield, scimitar and dagger. Her left hand held the standard with the gazelle. An old servant approached her, leading her horse – an Arab thoroughbred with big liquid eyes – by the halter. As she took the reins she slipped something into the old man’s hand: the key that opened the underground hatch. She whispered an order: ‘Open the hatch tomorrow at dawn, Ali`, and set the prisoner free. Give him a horse and enough water and food for five days.’
Amir had had the gate opened and awaited Arad at the head of the column. She spurred on her mount and flanked him, then slowed her horse to a walk. The warriors separated into two columns on either side of the supply train. Another couple of squads acted as the forward and rear guards. The old man made his way slowly up to the bastions to watch the spectacle of that small sky-blue army moving west towards a battle that had never been fought.
The column was already just a streak of dust in the distance and yet the pounding of hooves seemed stronger, the horses’ neighing closer. The old man could not explain what could be causing such a strange phenomenon and went down to the courtyard to see what was happening.
As he was opening the north gate he was suddenly confronted by a stone-faced horseman surrounded by a group of bedouins who burst in at a gallop, jumped off their mounts and thronged around the well to drink.
Selznick did not even get off his horse. He rode slowly around the entire courtyard, looking up and all about. He seemed disappointed, as though he had expected something very different. He observed the statue of the winged horse that was illuminated now by the first rays of the sun. The closer he got, the more it seemed a shapeless torso, mutilated and corroded by time and by countless sandstorms.
He stopped in front of the old man, who beheld him with astonishment and fear. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m the custodian of this place,’ he answered.
‘You expect me to believe that you live here alone?’
‘It’s true. The caravans headed to the Mecca stop here and leave me food in exchange for water and shelter.’
‘What is this place?’ Selznick pressed.
‘It is the tomb of a holy man venerated and respected by all. You must respect him as well.’
‘Liar!’ shouted Selznick. ‘How can a holy man be buried under a pagan image?’ he said, pointing at the marble statue at the tower’s summit. ‘The column of warriors that I watched leave here before dawn was certainly no caravan of pilgrims headed for the Mecca!’
He turned to his men. ‘Search this place from top to bottom!’ He got off his horse and went up to the inner walkway, entering the rooms facing it, which still showed signs of having been occupied a short time before. He went down to the underground chambers and his attention was immediately drawn by the sounds of a quarrel. He ran along a corridor and down a flight of stairs and found three of his bedouins heatedly arguing abou
t something they’d found on the floor.
‘Stop!’ he shouted.
At the sound of his voice, they got to their feet, panting. A silver coin glittered on the ground and Selznick bent to pick it up. On one side was the effigy of a man with a strong, square jaw and drooping eyebrows, a diadem crowning his head, on the other an eagle holding a serpent in its claws.
‘Have you found others?’ he asked. ‘Where?’
One of the bedouins gestured with his eyes towards a comrade standing to his left and Selznick forced him to open his fist. He was holding two gold coins.
‘They were scattered on the steps here,’ he admitted.
‘Then there must be more,’ said Selznick. ‘Bring me the old man!’
PHILIP, LOCKED UP in his prison, was aware of shouts and cries, horses whinnying and galloping. At first he tried to make himself heard by shouting out himself, but he soon fell silent, realizing that no one was listening, or that even if his yelling was heard, it would be confused with the din outside. After a while, he began to hear a man’s cries of pain, becoming more and more agonizing. He realized then that Selznick must have taken control of the place.
The man’s cries grew weaker as time passed and finally died away completely. Philip became convinced that no one would arrive to free him and that he would die of hunger and thirst in that rat hole. The only alternative was to shout loud enough to be heard by Selznick’s men once night had fallen – an option he didn’t want to think about.
He had already explored his prison thoroughly without finding any way out. There was an air flue on one side that rose from his cell to the top of the tower, but climbing out was impossible because the opening in the ceiling was covered by a heavy iron grille, through which he could see a bit of the darkening sky.