English.” Bahir shuddered. “Savages.”
“Savages who don’t ride camels.” Newt smirked.
“Then you are destined to be a footsore thirsty savage.” Bahir smirked back.
Dear God, they would still be arguing when the sun set. “They are not that bad to ride,” Henry said. “They sway a bit, and smell, but they don’t need to stop for water nearly as often as we do.”
“Aye, but I—”
“Get on the bedamned camel, Newt.”
Hidden by her hijab Alya stood in the doorway. Shoulders slumped, she dragged her feet to the litter.
Her nurse kept an arm about her shoulders. “All will be well, habibti. You will see. Your new family will love you just as we do.”
The master entered the courtyard, his expression an open wound as he stared at his daughter. They might never meet again. Henry understood some of his pain.
“Will you not say goodbye to your father, habibti?” They stood less than two feet away from him. Closer than Henry had ever been to the girl on the wall. Subtle notes of night-flowering jasmine twined around his senses.
“He sends me away.” Her niqab muffled her sniffles. “I have nothing to say to him.”
The slave wanted to bow to her pain, let her feel his silent support. However, Henry understood only too well what she risked by not making her parting sweet.
He slipped around the camel to stand beside her.
Bahir stiffened. “Get away from her.”
“Wish your father God be with him,” Henry said.
Her gaze flew to his face. Eyes like the dappled shade of the woodland, part green, parts golden stared at him.
He shook off Bahir’s grip on his shoulder. “You cannot know what the future holds, or if you might get this chance again. Tell him now that you love him. Carry that memory with you.”
Chapter 4
Newt’s face amused Henry endlessly. His kaffiyeh hid the smile that came more easily as the distance between them and Cairo widened.
“What manner of beast is this?” Newt pushed the kaffiyeh away from his mouth. Sitting stick straight in the saddle, his legs cinched the camel’s sides in a death grip. “And why can I not control it?”
“She follows the lead camel.” He pointed to Bahir’s back. “Sit back.” He tapped the backrest behind him. “See how Bahir hooks his legs up? Do the same, you will be more comfortable.”
“Is this English you speak?” Bahir turned his head to speak over his shoulder. “You are an interesting man, Henry.” The way the big sod said his name dragged it out ceaselessly into Hen-er-ree. “You speak your mother tongue, French and, apparently, Arabic.”
It only surprised him it had taken Bahir most of the day to mention that he had used her language with Alya.
“You bear watching.” Bahir nodded. “You appear to be a man of many secrets.”
“You asked me no questions.” Henry envied the ease of the big man atop his saddle. He swayed with the motion of the beast beneath him. A slow, somnambulant sway that blended with the silken swish of the camel’s feet on the sand.
Bahir grunted. “How long have you spoken Arabic?”
“Long enough.” Three years in which he had counted the days despite himself. “Ask me why I learned it.”
A long silence followed, and then Bahir said, “Why?”
“So I could tell you how much I want to rip your head off and shove it up your ass.”
* * * *
Alya’s cheeks burned at the English’s language. Hen-er-ree. She formed his name on a whisper. Did it have a meaning? Could it refer to his mind-stealing eyes? Blue as pure lapis lazuli, bluer than the merciless sky arcing above them. She had never seen eyes that color. They were wasted on a man who tended her father’s goats, and used his mighty shoulders for nothing more than toting rocks, sacks and whatever Bahir bade him carry.
Except, Father had said he bore the title lord in his own land, which made him one of the infidel knights.
She had caught a glimpse of them once when they rode into Cairo to speak with the sultan. With metal tunics, massive horses, and long, straight swords, they had made her breath catch. In that moment, she had known a spine freezing fear of the foreign invaders. Had Hen-er-ree a horse so large, and had he sweated beneath all that metal in the desert sun?
Sir Hen-er-ree. This is what they called themselves, Father had told her. Sir this and sir that. Did they call their women thus? Sir Alya. It made her giggle.
Ears always pricked for the slightest sound she made, Bahir’s head swung in her direction.
She shrugged to indicate it was nothing, and went back to scouring the desert landscape for something of interest.
With midday heat trapped within its fabric confines the litter grew unbearably hot. She tied one of the curtains back. The first breeze of evening fluttered through the silk tassels and made their shadows dance across the desert floor.
Bahir rode in the front. Behind him came Henry and his pretty friend. Newt. What manner of name was Newt? If she dared she would ask them. Perhaps somewhere on this trip Bahir would allow her near enough to do so.
Her eyes ached from crying. Dry and gritty now that she had no more tears to shed. Behind her lay Father and Nasira. Her beautiful chamber draped in sunlight silk that her father had given to her when she became a woman. Her peaceful rooftop courtyard where she stood to watch the sun set, or sat beneath the canopy and painted. In the heat of the day she might lay upon a bright bed of cushions content to drowse and dream.
In her wake came the heavily laden camels with her baggage. Filled also with gifts, Bahir told her, for her new family. Spices, silks, costly perfume oils, ouds and attars, and rare myrrh. Costly, precious gifts to buy their love for her.
Bahir thought her ignorant. In faraway Genoa, her family would view her as strange and the enemy. Had they not sent their brothers, fathers, husbands and uncles to fight her kind? To bring them the word of God. Her father had raised her Christian, so she had that in her favor, but not much else. They would not see a niece or a fellow Christian when they saw her. They would see a hated foe, a nonbeliever.
What did Henry see? Or his pretty friend?
They saw a mound of dark fabric. A pair of eyes peeking over the top of her niqab.
She tweaked the front curtain for a better view of Newt. Near as tall as Henry, but younger and narrower across the chest and shoulders. His dark hair fell to his shoulders. He had the sort of face to make a girl sigh and pine like the descriptions of the poets. Only now he did not look so poetic, perched like a nut atop his camel. He would be bruised by the time they stopped to rest.
Bahir
