Call of the Trumpet (13 page)

A long, tense silence stretched between them. “As you say,” Cecile said abruptly, “it is only a legend. And I, for one, refuse to believe it. It is an ugly tale of cruelty, deprivation, and slavery.”

Taken aback, Matthew could think of nothing to say. He had merely told a simple story. Why did she react this way? How could her outlook be so entirely different from his, so skewed? He stepped aside as she flounced past him, black eyes glinting fire.

“When you are ready to have your mare tended to,” Cecile snapped over her shoulder, “I will be in Hagar’s tent.”

The hot rise of his temper was a relief in comparison to his confusion. Ignoring the saddle lying upon the ground, Matthew swung up on his mare, gripped his legs tightly, and dug in his heels. The horse spun away, off into the desert, and Matthew rode until the wind had cleared his mind and eased the disturbed and angry pounding of his heart.
Women!
he thought. Praise Allah he had never taken a wife. What if he had earned one such as bint Sada?

C
ECILE AWOKE STILL FLUSHED FROM THE EFFECTS
of a lingering dream. She had been back beside the water, El Faris at her side. Their hands touched, and the electricity thrilled through her yet again …

She shook her head, angry with herself for the longing she had felt, angry with him for having caused it. Anger was a much safer emotion, and Cecile fanned it back to life.

Men! They had to reduce everything to their own narrow terms. Love and devotion, indeed! What Matthew had really meant in the telling of his tale, what all men wanted, was obedience, absolute and unquestioning, from their women, as well as their horses. If they could, they would probably purchase all their women and keep them as absolute slaves. Yes, far better to be angry than to give in to an emotion that could enslave you. Cecile rolled from her sleeping quilt and quickly dressed.

Hagar stirred. “Mmmm,” she mumbled. “You are up early. Be a good girl and start the cooking fire.”

“From now on I tend to my own needs first!” Cecile flashed, and marched from the tent.

Hagar struggled to a sitting position and shook her grizzled head. The girl was trouble, she had known it from the first. El Faris was a wise man, but not in all things. And this woman was one of them. True, she had Badawin blood. She was courageous, tough, and resilient. But she had been raised a European, and the Europeans had some strange ideas. She did not understand them, any more than the girl obviously did not understand the more subtle ways of the Badawin.

Yet for all their sakes, Hagar decided wearily, she should try and get through to her. For the peace of the camp, if nothing else.

The fire had been started by the time Cecile returned. Her temper had cooled, and she found it hard to look Hagar in the eye. Well, it would all blow over, she thought, and sat down to help with the breakfast preparations.

Hagar, however, ceased what she was doing and glared at Cecile sternly. “Look at me,” she ordered. “I have something I must say to you.”

Cecile felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. She glanced up slowly.

“You say you wish to live in the desert. Is that not so?” the old woman asked.

Puzzled, Cecile nodded.

“Then there is much you must learn beside how to cook and weave and tend the animals. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Cecile wasn’t sure, but she nodded anyway.

“You are proud and that is good, for it is a quality that has helped the Badawin to survive. But you are, perhaps, too proud, and it is, I think, the way Europeans must be, looking first to their own importance. Yet that is not the way to exist on the desert. Individuals do not survive here, only those who stand together, work together, aid one another.”

Cecile opened her mouth, but Hagar wasn’t finished.

“El Faris is a good example, I think. He leads us, protects us, provides the food that we cook for him … and ourselves,” Hagar added pointedly. “Yet you seem to resent him and the things we do for him. You act as if he is not deserving of the small duties we perform for him, when he does so much for us in return. Why is this? Do you not realize how important it is for us all to fulfill our assigned roles in order to exist?”

“Roles!” Cecile spat, temper overriding caution. “Is it our ‘role’ to simply bow down to any man who comes along? Are we expected to toil and sweat and waste our lives simply because they demand it?”

Hagar bit back the reply on her tongue. “No,” she said at last, with a sigh. “Though I understand how it might seem that way to you. No, like anything, anyone else, a man must earn what he receives. But I will tell you this.”

Hagar gazed for a long moment into Cecile’s eyes, then said, “There is much pain, much fear in you. I see it. You know what your life was like in your country, how your people treated you. But remember this, El Faris is not the author of your mistreatment. Nor is he the one who captured or sold you into slavery. Do not confuse him with others, little one. He is not deserving of your condemnation.”

Temporarily, but firmly, silenced, Cecile sat back on her heels. Hagar heaved to her feet and stalked with measured steps from their tent.

A wave of excitement preceded the hunters’ departure into the desert. It looked as if the whole camp had turned out to wish them good hunting.

Cecile stood with the rest of the women, but there was no smile behind her veil, no joyful wish in her heart. Despite Hagar’s words, despite her desire to conform and belong to the desert and its ways, she could not help but wish she was on one of the horses, while one of the men had to stay behind to make the
leben.

At last they departed, leaving the women in their dust. “Come,” Hagar said when the riders had disappeared behind the gently rolling dunes. “You have much to learn today.”

The first lesson, Cecile feared, would be how to milk a ewe, but she found, to her relief, that care of the sheep was another woman’s responsibility. Kut, a widow, and her young son tended all the animals belonging to the camp. In exchange, the woman received a fair share of their by-products.

When a good supply of milk had been obtained, Cecile and Hagar trudged back to their tent. “Now pour the milk into the goatskin
makhmar
,” Hagar instructed. “Cover it with a rug.”

Cecile complied, shooing away the files. “What now?”

“We wait. In four hours we will have
rauba.
From the
rauba
we will make
leben.”

Cecile had a rough idea what that would entail, and glanced warily at the
mirjahah,
a tripod that Hagar had set up in a corner of the tent. Producing
leben
was much like making butter. It had to be churned for hours, and Cecile had no illusions about who would do the churning. She sighed. “What do we do in the meantime, Hagar?”

“Many things,” Hagar replied cheerfully. “We must grind wheat for bread, fill the water skins, gather more wood and camel dung, air the sleeping quilts. Oh, yes, and there is the weaving. You will be good at this, I think, with such nimble fingers.”

Cecile smiled thinly. “Then we had better get started, hadn’t we?”

Hagar nodded enthusiastically and settled herself comfortably on the carpet. “Yes, we must begin, I think. Now go on.” She indicated her supply box. “Get the mortar and pestle, the wooden trough, too. We will begin crushing the wheat.” Comfortably settled against a pillow, Hagar closed her eyes.

Once in the desert the riders slowed, leaving the work to the coursing hounds. The thin, long-legged
saluqis
ran ahead, darting back and forth. Matthew watched Turfa, his sleek, brown-and-white bitch, with pride. She was as well trained and loyal as Al Chah ayah. He stroked the mare’s gracefully arched neck.

“All you need now is a good woman,
ya ammi,
and your riches will be beyond counting.”

Matthew glanced up at Ahmed who, like many of the men, preferred to hunt from a camel’s back. “Good women are hard to find,” he said, grinning. “Your Hajaja is a rare jewel.”

Ahmed grinned back, handsome black skin shiny with sweat. “And she will have a son,” he declared. “She tells me she is certain.”

“Then I would believe her.” Matthew laughed.

They rode in silence for a time. In spite of himself, Matthew found his thoughts turning to Ahmed’s unsubtle suggestion. He had, as a matter of fact, been thinking along these same lines for awhile. Badawin women were sacred, their virginity highly prized and untouchable outside the marriage bed. There were other kinds of women, of course, which he occasionally visited in Muscat. But the experience was far from satisfying. And he spent many long months at a time in the desert. A wife would certainly be the solution to an irritating problem. Furthermore, he had seen what wonderful companionship existed within some marriages, Ahmed and Hajaja’s for example. He had often, of late, found himself longing for just such a relationship. He was not, by nature, a solitary man, and a wife, the right woman, would be a companion and helpmate in the truest sense of the word.

The only trouble, Matthew mused, was finding a suitable woman, one with whom he could fall in love. Not that he didn’t admire Badawin women, but they were quiet and shy for the most part, difficult to get to know. It was probably the Englishman in him, but although Badawin women were tough and strong, as desert-dwellers must be, he found their subservience vaguely disturbing.

Matthew shook his head, remembering a pair of flashing dark eyes. No subservience there! She had spirit, that one. Perhaps too much. And her moods were inexplicable. What, for instance, had gotten into her last night?

There was no telling. A good horse, or a dog, he could understand. But women? They were far too complicated. The best thing would be to forget all about them.

It was difficult, however, when the image of the honey-skinned enchantress kept appearing before his eyes. Dagger-tongued or not, by Allah, she was magnificent! She had, furthermore, quite a bit in common with him. Both of them had chosen to be desert-dwellers, yet came from an alien country. Their heritage would always set them apart from the Badawins in some ways, no matter how hard they tried, or wished it, to be otherwise. His home in Oman was an example.

Although he had made the desert an essential part of his life, and lived by its laws, he was still not truly Badawin. He lacked the Badawin’s elemental spirit, which was constant, endless wanderlust, the true nomadic urge. And he sensed the same intrinsic difference in Cecile. She would no doubt learn to live by Badawin custom, but he didn’t think she would ever be able to bow to it. Just as his need for a home, for roots, was alien to them, so did Cecile have an innate rebelliousness that was foreign to the Badawin mind. It would always subtly set her apart from the people, no matter how much she longed to be one of them. He understood that completely.

A whine and a low growl distracted Matthew’s attention from what were becoming most agreeable thoughts. Al Chah ayah snorted and tossed her head.

“Look,
ya ammi
… there!”

Matthew followed Ahmed’s outstretched arm. Something lean and gray disappeared out of sight beyond the rise of a distant dune. “It is Al Dhib!” he shouted. “The wolf!”

And it was a bad sign, Matthew thought, just what he had feared. The previous winter had been hard. Game would be scarce and the wolves in keen competition with the hunters.

“A bad sign,” Ahmed said, repeating Matthew’s thoughts aloud. “Gazelle, even the hare will be hard to find, I fear.”

“That is not all there is to fear.”

Ahmed looked sharply at his master. “Is Al Dhib so hungry, do you think, that he will bother our herds and flocks?”

“I hope not, Ahmed. But I would put an extra guard on tonight.”

“Very well,
ya ammi.
It is done.”