The Tower (31 page)

‘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.

I
NSIDE 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 the 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.

A
RAD 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 about 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!’

P
HILIP, 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.

He had assuaged his hunger pangs slightly by eating a few crumbled biscuits from the bottom of his haversack, but his thirst was becoming unbearable. He looked through his bag to see if there was anything that could help him out of his plight. He noticed that he still had some of the fireworks that Lino Santini had given him as he was leaving Naples. He thought of using the powder to blow up the hatch, but it was made of solid iron and looked too heavy and out of reach. But he reasoned that Arad’s column could not have covered more than fifteen or twenty kilometres in a day’s journey and that they would surely see the light of a rocket if he could manage to shoot it directly up the flue through the grating. Arad had already seen that kind of explosion on the Bab el Awa road and would immediately connect it with him. It was his only option besides revealing his presence to whoever had occupied the tower. He tried to build a support for the gunpowder-filled cardboard cylinder that would keep it in a perfectly vertical position, attempting to aim it at one of the central openings of the grille. If it exploded against one of the bars, the din of the explosion would attract someone to the chimney. Even that would probably mean a way out, although he’d have to deal with the consequences.

He waited until the sky was completely dark, then lit a match and held it to the touchpaper. The rocket flared and took off with a sharp whistle. It shot through the grille and soared into the sky, exploding into a cascade of light and colour. The bedouins on guard, startled by the piercing whistle, watched the fabulous spill of lights in wonder and fear. They ran to knock at the door of the room that Selznick had occupied, but their description was so excited and confused that Selznick, who had heard the sound of the explosion himself, could not figure out what they had actually seen. He ordered another inspection of the monument, inside and out. He was worried about a superstitious reaction on the part of his men and didn’t want them running off on him.

He walked around the structure with a torch in hand, examining every recess of the ancient building. The phenomenon that his men had described as a supernatural event had left him sceptical. He passed alongside the tortured body of the old custodian, who had died without revealing a thing: neither whether there were treasures hidden underground, nor who the warriors he had seen leaving were.

The old man lay on the pavement with his arms splayed and eyes wide open. Nothing would wake him again. Of all the dead men that Selznick had seen in his life, what struck him most was the fixity of their stares. He had always tried to search for an epiphany, a preview of infinity, in their petrified expressions, and sometimes he had even succeeded. Their cold pupils had allowed him, he felt, to face the abyss. Strangely, he had experienced no terror. He realized that it was no deeper, blacker or icier than what he had inside him.