The Monsoon (80 page)

Dorian dropped the bamboo and let them go. He took a few deep breaths to bring his rage under control, then thought of the little girl. He ran back up the steps.

Yasmini was still crouched under the parapet. She was shaking and sobbing, and holding the sodden body of the monkey to her chest.

“Are you hurt, Yasmini? Did he hurt you?” She shook her head and wordlessly held Jinni out towards him. The monkey’s fur was soaked and flattened against his body, so that he appeared to be half his normal size, as though the skin had been flayed off him.

“His arm!” Yasmini whispered.

“It’s broken.” Dorian took the dangling limb gently between his fingers, and Jinni whimpered. but did not resist. He watched Dorian with huge, trusting eyes. Dorian tried to remember all he had learned from watching Dr. Reynolds working with the injuries of a sailor who had fallen from the rigging of the Seraph, and another who had caught his arm in the spinning bars of the capstan.

He straightened Jinni’s arm gently, using a short length of bamboo to secure it in that position, then bound it up with a strip of cotton torn from his keffiya head cloth

“I must take him to Ben Abram,” he told Yasmini, and lifted the small body out of her arms.

“I wish I could come with you,” she whispered, but she knew that was not possible, and Dorian did not bother to reply. He made a cradle for Jinni out of a fold of his robe.

Yasmini came with him as far as the gates of the zenana, and stood staring after him as he trotted off down the road through the palm groves heading for the town.

Within half a mile he caught up with one of the grooms from the stables leading a string of the Prince’s horses.

“Mustapha!” he shouted.

“Give me a ride as far as the harbour.”

Mustapha took him up on the back of his mount and they galloped through the narrow streets of the town, down to the se afront

Ben Abram was at work in his infirmary near the harbour. He came through from the small back room, scrubbing blood from his hands, and greeted Dorian and Jinni with astonishment.

“I have brought you a patient, old father, one who is in sore need of your great skills,” Dorian told him.

“Will the beast bite me?” Ben Abram peered at Jinni suspiciously.

“Have no fear. inni knows he can trust you.”

“The setting of bones is a skill that goes back into antiquity,” Ben Abram remarked, as he peered closely at the limb, “but I doubt any of my forebears had such a patient as this.” when he had finished, and the limb was sprinted and bandaged, Ben Abram gave Jinni a draught of laudanum, and the monkey slept in Dorian’s arms for all the long walk back to the zenana.

Yasmini was waiting for them just inside the gate. She took the drugged monkey out of Dorian’s arms, and carried him tenderly to the living quarters where they found Tahi in a tearful turmoil of worry.

“What have you done, you stupid boy?” She attacked Dorian the instant he put his head through the doorway.

“The whole zenana is in an uproar. Kush has been here. He is in such a terrible rage that he can hardly speak. Is it true that Jinni has bitten Zayn al-Din and that you have broken his tooth and smashed his nose, and that the bone in his foot is broken?

Kush says that Zayn may never be able to walk again, at the least he will be crippled for life.”

“He broke his foot with his own clumsiness.” Dorian was defiant and unrepentant, and Tahi seized him and hugged him to her ample bosom. She broke down and wept loudly.

“You do not know what danger you have brought on your own head!”

she sobbed.

“From now onwards we must always be on the watch. You must never eat or drink anything that I have not tasted first. You must keep the bar on the door to your sleeping chamber.” She reeled off the list of precautions that they would take against the vengeance of Kush and Zayn al-Din.

“Allah on knows what the Prince will think of this when he returns from Muscat.” She ended her tirade with morbid relish.

Yasmini and Dorian left her wailing and dreaming of horrors over her kitchen pots, and carried Jinni through to Dorian’s bedchamber.

They laid him on the sleeping mat and sat over him side by side.

Neither spoke, but after a while Yasmini drooped like fading blossom and fell asleep against Dorian’s shoulder.

He put his arm around her, and much later Tahi found them asleep in each other’s arms. She knelt beside the pair and studied their faces.

“They are so beautiful together, so young and so innocent.

What a great pity that it can never be. They might have had red-haired children,” she whispered, and lifted Yasmini out of Dorian’s protective arms to carry her back to her own mother’s splendid quarters near the main gate, where she handed her over to one of the nurses.

ush came again, early the following morning, full of bluster and threats. Despite these it was apparent that he was not prepared to flout the strictures of al-Allama and Ben Abram, and to bring any real harm to Dorian, but his malevolence shimmered around him like an aura of evil. At the door he looked back at Dorian, his swollen features filled with hatred.

“The day will soon come, if Allah is kind, when you will no longer be here in the zenana to trouble me.” The atmosphere crackled like summer lightning with hostility towards Dorian. The other children, all except Yasmini, kept well away from him. As soon as they saw him they broke off their rowdy games and scuttled away tittering. The women covered their faces and drew the skirts of their robes aside as though contact with him would contaminate them.

Three days later he met Zayn as he came back through the gates from his lessons with al-Allama. Zayn was sitting with Abubaker and three other toadies. They were feasting on a dish of sweetmeats, but they fell silent as Dorian walked down the cloisters towards them, and watched him uneasily. Zayn’s nose was still swollen and there was a black scab on his upper lip. Both his eye sockets were bruised even darker than their natural colour. His right foot was wrapped in bandages perhaps it was true that he might be crippled for life, Dorian thought, but he never faltered, and he stared directly at Zayn. The bigger boy could not hold that cold green stare and turned away. He said something to Abubaker and both boys giggled nervously.

Dorian strode past them and Zayn grew bolder as he walked away.

“Skin white as pus,” he said, and his breath whistled through the gap in his front teeth.

“Eyes green as pigs” pee,” Abubaker agreed.

“Only one who drinks it would know the colour so well,” Dorian said as loudly, and walked on without looking back.

Over the following weeks the feeling of dangerous hostility subsided. Though Dorian had become the outcast of the zenana, now the others simply ignored him. Even I Zayn and Abubaker no longer reacted to his presence, but behaved with exaggerated nonchalance whenever they met. Zayn was still limping and over time it became clear that the damage to his right foot might indeed be permanent.

However, Tahi was not placated by the hostile truce between the two boys, and she missed no opportunity to lecture Dorian on the dangers of exposing himself to poison, or other macabre methods of dealing death at a distance.

“Always shake out your kanzu before donning it.

Turn over your sandals. There is a small green scorpion that kills so swiftly that the victim does not have time to cry out after its sting. Kush knows well the ways of the scorpion, and all the other evil things.” But none of this could dampen Dorian’s naturalh ebullient spirits for long. He spent less and less time within the walls of the zenana. When he was there, Yasmini was his constant companion.

As a credit to Ben Abram’s skills, Jinni recovered rapidly, and though he favoured the undamaged limb he was soon scampering along the top of the outer wall or scaling the highest branches of the peepul trees.

The long month of Ramadan came and then the new moon ended the fast. Within days Zayn al-Din was gone from the zenana. He had reached puberty and manhood, and, still limping from the injury Dorian had inflicted on” him, had entered the outside world. Dorian and Yasmini rejoiced at his departure. They heard that he had been sent to Muscat to join the court of his uncle, the Caliph.

Tahi sniffed when they told her.

“He has been sent as a hostage to the Caliph to ensure the obedience of the Prince.” This was not the first that Dorian had heard of the intrigues within the Omani royal family. However, Tahi repeated what he knew already.

“The Caliph has executed six of his brothers for treason, and he does not trust those he has spared.” She dropped her voice to a whisper.

“The Caliph is a cruel, evil man. Allah forbid that you should ever come to his notice as the child of the prophecy.” She shivered at the thought.

few weeks after Zayn al-Din’s abrupt departure, Yasmini came to Dorian’s quarters before he was Lawake and shook his arm urgently.

Jinni did not come for his food last night and he was not in my bed this MOrning.” She was drawn and shaky from grief and worry.

Dorian jumped up and flung on his kanzU while Yasmini lamented, “I think something terrible has happened to my Jinni.”

“We will find him,” Dorian promised her.

“Come on!” They started with all the most likely places, Jinni’s favourite haunts. The chief of these was the tomb of the saint, Abd Allah Muhammad All. They searched every inch of the ancient structure, calling Jinni’s name and offering cinnamon cakes.

They knew that, if anything would, the aroma would bring him out of any hiding-place.

When they failed there, they went systematically through the gardens, but with the same lack of success. By this time Yasmini was beside herself with grief.

“You saved him once, Dowle. Now Shaitan has come back for him again. He may have taken him away as a punishment.”

“Don’t be a baby, Yassie.” Unconsciously he used the same words with which Tom had chided him.

“Shaitan does not concern himself with monkeys and small females.”

“What are we going to do?”

Yasmini turned those haunted honey-coloured eyes on him with absolute trust.

“We will start again at the tomb. Jinni must be somewhere.” The entrance to the tomb had been bricked and plastered closed centuries before, and though Dorian examined it minutely there was no hole through which even a monkey could pass. They went up onto the terrace and searched that again. Though they called until they were hoarse, there was still no sign of Jinni.

At last they sat in despair on the edge of the cistern and avoided each other’s eyes, tired and dispirited. If they had not been absolutely silent they would never have heard the faint chattering.

They heard it at the same time and Yasmini seized Dorian’s arm, sinking her sharp little nails into his skin.

“Jinni!” she whispered.

They jumped down from the cistern and stared about eagerly, their tiredness forgotten. The sound seemed to emanate in the air around them, without any focal point.

“Where is it coming from, Dowle?” Yasmini asked, but he shushed her imperiously. Holding up a hand for silence, he tracked the faint sound across the terrace. When it stopped he whistled, and immediately Jinni called again, leading him to the far end.

There they seemed to reach a dead end, until Dorian went down on his knees and crawled along the juncture of the dome wall and the skirting of the terrace where Jinni’s cries were perceptibly louder.

Weeds and creepers blanketed the area, but he picked out a track through them that looked as though somebody or something had recently passed that way. He moved in, bending the weeds aside and lifting the dangling creepers to inspect the base of the dome wall.

He saw at once that the coral rag had disintegrated at one point and that there was an aperture large enough for Jinni to have squeezed through. When he put his ear to this opening his last doubts were dispelled. Jinni’s cries were magnified as though by a speaking tube.

“He’s down there!” he told Yasmini.

She clapped her hands joyfully.

“Can you get him out, Dowle?”

Then she placed her mouth to the hole and shouted down it, “Jinni, my baby! Can you hear me?” She was answered by faint but excited squeaks from the depths of the hole.

“Get out of the way.” Dorian pushed her aside, and began to work at enlarging the hole with his bare hands.

The ragging was un mortared and chunks of it came away in his hands. He sent Yasmini to bring him one of the bamboo staves from the pile at the bottom of the steps, and used this to prise out the more stubborn chunks of brick.

Within half an hour he had enlarged the opening enough so that he could squeeze through. However, when he peered down into the depths all he could see was the swirling dust of his labours, and darkness.

“Wait here, Yassie,” he ordered, and lowered his legs into the opening.

Although he kicked around he was unable to touch the bottom or find a foothold. He clung to the lip with both hands and let himself down an inch at a time. Abruptly the section of the wall he was holding broke away, and with a shout of alarm he fell into the dark. He expected to plunge down hundreds of feet to his death, but he dropped only inches before he hit the ground. The impact was so unexpected that his legs gave way under him and he fell in a heap. He scrambled up.

Yasmini was calling down urgently, “Are you all right, Dowle?”

“Yes.”

“Can I come down?”

“No! You stay there. Take your head out of the way to let the light in.” When the dust had settled and his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he surveyed his surroundings. A faint ray of sunlight came from the opening above him and by its light he found himself in a narrow passage, which seemed to have been built into the centre of the massive outer wall of the tomb. It was just wider than his shoulders and high enough for him to stand upright.

Jinni’s cries came from close at hand and he moved towards them, sneezing. Dorian found a wooden door, which shut off the passage. It was crumbling with age and damp mould, and it had fallen off its rotten leather hinges.

Jinni must have swung on it, and even his small bulk had been enough to bring it down. Now he was trapped under it.