He fell to her from the sky.
Henri had launched the balloon from the village of Bou Saada, intending to follow the winds that blew along the high plateau skirting the range of Atlas Mountains that ran parallel to the coastline of northern Africa, winds that would carry him, he hoped, to Morocco. He and Gascon had waited weeks for the right conditions, each day watching the sky, each day turning away disappointed. There had been no wind, only utter stillness. Patiently they tended their supplies and tested their gear, checking and rechecking to make certain that all remained ready. Even though Henri expected to be aloft only a few days, the balloon was loaded with water and food enough for two weeks. He was an adventurer, but he was never casual or careless.
And then at last one morning he walked outside and a strong breeze ruffled his hair and he knew it was time. He and Gascon hurried to the compound where their airship lay waiting. They inflated the balloon to the delight of the astonished swarms of curious Arabs who had come to watch them each day and who squatted in circles and drank tea and chattered noisily as the fabric billowed up and out, straining against the tethers that held it to the ground. Finally the great contrivance was ready. Henri and Gascon clambered into the basket, much to the consternation of the French prefect of the district, who had reminded Henri a dozen times over the weeks – politely, of course, for after all the man was a noble of the empire – that he was a perfect fool. The prefect was beside himself with worry that the count should be lost in Algeria from his prefecture. It was madness! No European had ever tried such a thing. The inquiries from Paris would be never-ending. So he had implored the count: Could he not begin his voyage from Algiers? From Aïn Sefra? Would a journey by camel to Morocco not satisfy his needs? But the count would not listen, and the prefect was miserable and drank too much absinthe and imagined his career soaring away with the balloon. He looked beseechingly at Henri one last time as he cast off the land lines.
“You will die!” he predicted with grave certainty as the balloon lifted away from its moorings.
“Not today!” Henri shouted back cheerfully, and he waved good-bye and was gone.
They gained altitude quickly, soaring away from the throngs of Arabs below. As the magical ascent began, the crowd gave out a great roar of approval and delight. The balloon moved silently to the west. Henri and Gascon watched as the forms of people in the fields grew tiny and their donkeys became toys and their houses little boxes. When the shadow of the balloon passed overhead the people on the ground looked up and saw it, and a commotion would inevitably occur. A great cry would follow – sometimes of alarm, sometimes of wonder – and the balloon was too high for Henri and Gascon to hear but they could see as the little people bound to the earth gesticulated and waved and raced in circles on their donkeys and pointed to the sky. Some damned the apparition and some danced with joy, and some fell to their knees in prayer.
For several hours everything went perfectly. They saw Djelfa, then Aflou and Aïn Madhi, checking off each on the map as they passed. They settled into the quiet business of flight, gazing in awe at the earth passing beneath them, marking the lakes and streams they saw on the maps they carried, identifying animals and birds and trees, tending to the drag lines and rigging and other equipment of the balloon. The count meticulously recorded atmospheric conditions, wind speeds and currents, and variations in temperature and pressure as they flew. The sky was cloudless as far as they could see, perfect and deep blue. But late in the afternoon the wind shifted its direction and began blowing from the north. The change was subtle at first, then grew stronger as the wind thrust them toward the mountains. It would soon carry them over.
“We need to make a decision, Gascon,” Henri said. “We can keep going that way” – he pointed to the south, toward the unknown – “or we can set it down on this side and wait for a safer wind.”
Gascon looked out over the mountains. He had been with the count for years and knew without asking what the count wanted to do. He liked it that his master asked his opinion, and treated him more as an equal than a servant. That was what made the count so special, so different. Others of rank would simply command or demand. The count always asked, even though he didn’t have to.
On that day high above the Atlas Mountains, it was not a difficult decision. He shared the count’s love of adventure, and they were well prepared. Gascon had no family, nothing to hold him back.
“We never learned anything setting it down, sire,” he replied.
Henri smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“Yes, sire. I know that.”
“Alors, we’ll need more altitude.”
Gascon dropped ballast and the balloon soared upward, to where the obliging winds increased in speed and carried them across the Atlas Mountains, over the Djebel Amour and into the unknown beyond. There was a transition startling in its intensity, as though a great line had been drawn between the green, fertile northern slopes of the mountains and the reddish brown rocks and barren hillsides of the southern side. The mountains melted away to a plateau, the plateau to a sudden and brilliant golden range of dunes. They floated between heaven and earth, the wind at their backs, the great expanse of the Sahara before them. They ate dried meat and sipped from their water flasks and watched the world pass silently beneath them. The maps they carried were reasonably accurate up to the mountains, for thousands of Frenchmen had explored and settled there. But few Europeans had ventured to the south of the mountains, and fewer still had returned. There were a thousand legends but little reliable information about what lay in that vast region, which the Arabs of the fertile north called the Land of Thirst and Fear. It was a much-storied region to which they floated, inhabited by a mysterious race of men who were said to be giants. The Arabs called them the Tuareg, the abandoned of God, the people of the veil, and when they spoke of them it was with a mixture of fear and dread and respect. They were known to be superb fighters who were masters of the desert and ruled the great caravan routes along which flowed steady streams of salt and slaves and gold.
Onward they flew toward the legends before them; and as the sun dipped to the horizon they saw a simultaneous sunset and moonrise, and it took their breath away, the moon coming up gold and full and glorious, the sun blazing red as it dipped through the sand haze of the horizon. They stood spellbound in their basket, looking from east to west and back again so as not to miss a moment of the heavenly display.
Henri had a brass sextant made in London that he carried in a worn leather case. He used it to plot their position, sighting carefully on the stars as the dusk turned to night. He marked his estimates on the special paper he had brought to make maps. The moon was so bright he barely needed the light of the small gas lantern that sat on the floor of the basket. They could see the desert below almost as clearly as during the day. “We’re here,” he said to Gascon as he marked their coordinates with a small X on the paper. “Wherever ‘here’ is.”
When he had finished with his work Henri pulled a small recorder from his pocket, a wooden flute-like instrument he’d found in a market somewhere. He wasn’t formally trained at music, but had a good ear for copying what he heard. Sometimes he would make up a melody to suit his mood. That evening he found the notes to float in the air with the balloon, velvet notes that captured the freedom and tranquillity of their passage and settled over the sleeping desert below. Gascon propped himself contentedly against the ropes and listened with his eyes closed.
They spelled each other through the night, one napping while the other kept a watchful eye on their progress. It was a night of peace and awe as the moonlit earth passed beneath them. The air was cold and crisp and they huddled under heavy robes. The morning sun rose over dunes as rich and golden as the moon had been. The slopes of the dunes that faced away from the sun were covered with a silver layer of frost, and looked like snowdrifts glistening in the soft light of dawn.
Henri peered intently at the map. “We’re over the Grand Erg Occidental,” he said. The Erg was one of the few sand oceans in a desert that had a thousand faces. Henri was aware of its existence and general location, but not its extent. The map was useless. An Arab trader in Bou Saada had told him that beyond the Erg lay a busy trading route. They could not set down until they were past the Erg, as they would never be able to escape on foot from the dunes. It was better to keep flying and hope that the wind would shift direction again and carry them to the west, for the Atlas Mountains swung in an arc in a southerly direction. With the right winds they would then cross the mountains once again, to Morocco. But the wind had its own plan and blew strongly all that day and night – to the south.
The dunes were undulating and endless and ran away into the distance as far as the eye could see. The heaps were laid out in great rows, one after the other, methodically, as though by some gigantic shovel of the gods. They were smooth and feminine and looked gossamer soft and pure. Sometimes gusts of wind would carry away gentle wisps of sand from their summits, like snow from the tops of mountain peaks. One range was gold, another reddish brown, the next yellow, the sand ever-changing in the light and shadows. The dunes had dimples and swirls and graceful long lines. Between them the land was flat but not always barren, occasionally sprouting scrub and bushes that clung to life.
Sometimes between the rows of dunes they could see small herds of gazelle grazing on the sparse tufts of grasses and weeds. A lone jackal ranged along the base of the dunes in search of mice. In the afternoon, Gascon spotted two ostriches, whose gangly legs were much exaggerated by the long shadows of the sun until they looked twenty feet tall, strutting and bouncing along like animated giants. The animals were oblivious to the silent passage of the balloon overhead.
Henri took careful notes, marking the features of the land. The balloon drew farther away from the Atlas, until with field glasses they could just make out the faint outline of mountains against the horizon. In his stomach, deep down inside, he felt an old familiar tingling sensation of fear mixed with anticipation as he watched the world he knew disappear.
And he loved it.
It was what he had always done. He had been born to a life of privilege. He had disappointed those, including his father, who had expected him to go into the military as countless generations of deVries men had done since the time of Louis IX. He left the military to his brother, Jules, whose temperament was vastly more suited to it than his own, and spurned the easy life to which his wealth and position would have entitled him. Instead he traveled, going places and doing things other men could not or dared not. He explored the wondrous caves of Cappadocia in central Turkey and the deserts of Arabia and the mountains of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. He wandered the markets of Macau and the streets of Tashkent. He had been shipwrecked in the Celebes Sea off the coast of Borneo and had seen whirling dervishes in Sudan. In order to travel to Marrakesh, where it was forbidden for Christians to enter, he had masqueraded as a Jew from Damascus, wearing a red skullcap and turban. He relished his life and cherished his freedom and wrote of his travels for the Société Géographique in Paris, where his journals were eagerly awaited by readers from Paris to London to New York.
So it was that floating into the unknown reaches of the Sahara did not strike terror into his heart, but rather gave him a familiar surge of adrenaline that gnawed at his belly and enlivened his senses and made colors brighter and smells sharper – made him want to laugh out loud with the delight of it all. He needed the feeling and fed it with his travels. It was a sort of ecstatic fear that dwelled near his sternum and radiated outward in a dull, hot rush. It was an almost mystical obsession, the passion of adventurers to penetrate the mysteries of the world, to see places never seen, to do things never done. It was a longing that would never be fulfilled, for as quickly as one horizon was reached another beckoned, and he was off again. Many years earlier, a soothsayer in a Delhi market had read his palms and told him he would die an old man. He laughed with all the self-assured conviction of a skeptic with a scientific mind. But he believed her and had spent his life since in a gray area somewhere between folly and inspiration.
On the morning of the third day the wind died at dawn. Seeing only more sand, they decided to increase their altitude so that they could look farther. Gascon dumped ballast, and they rose until they could see past the dunes to a great plateau that lay beyond. Henri peered through the field glasses. Between the dunes and the plateau there was a vast depression filled with wadis and deep canyons. Beyond that were more dunes, an infinite expanse of gold stretching away to the southwest. To the northwest, at the upper end of the depression, he could see the outline of a lake bed. It looked dry, but from the distance he couldn’t tell for certain. If it was a sebkha, a seasonal lake, it would suggest the presence of wells and people.
“We’ve come far enough south,” he said, not wishing to unduly tempt fate. “I think we’d better land and wait for favorable winds.”
Gascon nodded. “I agree, but we may be waiting a few days.” There was a gentle sloping riverbed that was lined on both sides by bushes and large boulders. “The rocks in that wadi will give us shelter. If the winds don’t come we can leave the balloon there and make our way out on foot back to the northwest.”
Henri pulled on the rope that opened a vent in the top of the balloon, and they began their descent to the valley below.
The balloon floated just above a ridge that ran along one side of the valley. They could see no one, no animals or sign of any life, but there were trails in the hard sand bed that suggested people occasionally passed this way. Such trails could be misleading, for in the desert they could exist for an eternity, and one could never tell how old they might be.
They neared the ground and passed over the canyon wall, expecting to settle their craft gently to the floor of the wadi. Suddenly the balloon was caught by a violent updraft that flung them quickly aloft. Before they could react a downdraft hurled them precipitously toward the rocks below.
“Ballast!” shouted Henri, even as Gascon was cutting the ropes holding the sandbags to the outside of the basket, but it was too late. The wicker basket slammed into a ridge of jagged rocks that ripped out the side. There was pandemonium aboard the craft as bodies and provisions flew about. Henri grabbed for some of the supplies as they disappeared over the side, but just as he reached out he was dashed to the bottom of the basket. The wind tore at them, dragging them along. The rocks caught the basket a second time, and the envelope of the balloon became a windsail that dipped down at an angle, the ropes straining to hold against the terrific force. One of the ropes caught on the sharp rocks and broke, then another, and at last the balloon ripped away free. Having lost most of its buoyancy by tilting at such an extreme angle, it quickly collapsed and fluttered emptily to the ground. As the ropes gave way, the basket plummeted the last few feet to the wadi floor. Both men fell hard and lay dazed and panting.
During the last moments of the balloon’s flight, seven riders atop their camels had emerged from around a bend in the wadi. Transfixed, they stopped dead still and watched as the balloon appeared over the ridge, its basket hugging the ground, the men inside struggling to maintain control. At first the fabric of the balloon billowed gently against the wind, then rose before them like some mighty celestial apparition, a silent flying ball of magnificent white cloth set against the deep blue sky.
“Hamdullilah! It is the djenoum!” said one rider in an urgent whisper, referring to the genies known to inhabit the rocks and the dark places in between. He drew his sword, a large double-edged blade, and held it at the ready by his side.
“Comes Allah!” said another.
“It is the moon, fallen from the sky!”
“Flying men of the clouds!”
Awed but unafraid, the group moved forward, watching as the mysterious craft rose and then fell, bouncing and flopping and finally dumping its cargo of flying men of the clouds unceremoniously onto the ground.
Momentarily stunned, Henri lay still. He heard the voices and did not recognize the language. Since it was not Arabic, he guessed it must be the language of the Tuareg.
Henri got to his knees and helped Gascon, who still lay gasping. The riders had drawn forward into a semi-circle around the two men, and Henri had to look nearly straight upward to see them. From his position they looked twelve feet tall astride their camels, their silhouettes forbidding and yet magnificent against the sky. He was as awed by their appearance on the camels as they had been by his in the balloon, and for a moment the French count and the seven riders regarded each other silently, warily. The Tuareg were resplendent atop their mounts, cloaked from head to toe in rich indigo and dazzling white cloth, which covered their heads and bodies completely except for a slit for their eyes, eyes which were shadowed and dark and unrevealing. The cloth of their turbans was drawn numerous times around their heads, heaped high and tight, helmet-like, adding to the sensation of towering height and imposing presence. They were armed with lances. Heavy striking swords in well-tooled red leather scabbards were suspended from cotton bands slung over their shoulders. They carried shields of antelope hide upon which a series of small cuts formed the image of a Latin cross. They sat in high-backed riding saddles whose pommels also formed the likeness of a cross. To Henri they looked like the medieval crusaders whose portraits could be found among those of his ancestors at the Château deVries. They looked like kings.
The lead rider was an elegant man, tall and aloof, who looked down upon the two aeronauts as though he were the lord of creation, the master of all men. Behind him, Henri was astonished to see that the only one of them whose face was not obscured was a woman. She nudged her camel forward through the group and stopped to regard him silently. Whenever Henri looked at a woman he invariably noticed her eyes first. Before her clothes, before her hair, before her face or figure, before anything else he looked in her eyes, for there, he knew, he would always find the woman. This woman’s eyes captivated him. They were deep brown, shining with humor and intelligence, enchanted pools alight with character and life, and for a long wonderful moment her eyes held his. She wore robes like the others; but, extraordinarily for a North African woman, her head and face were bare. She was beautiful, her features as unfamiliar to Henri as her language. She looked neither Arabic nor African nor European. Her cheeks were high and her skin was light, shining and smooth. Perhaps Berber, he thought. Her neck was slender, and she smiled through perfect, even white teeth. She had long dark brown hair that she wore in tight braids. There was great dignity in her carriage. Like the others she sat tall in her saddle, imperious and erect. She regarded the balloon with delight and Henri with faint amusement as he dusted himself off. He helped Gascon to his feet, but didn’t take his eyes off her. She was an exquisite mystery to him.
When she spoke he heard authority and certainty in her voice. He listened hard, as though he might be able to understand her words even though the language was unfamiliar.
“It is called a ballon,” she explained to the others, who were still debating among themselves about what manner of sorcery lay before them. “I have seen one like it in Algiers.”
“What is a ‘ballon’?” asked one of the veiled men.
“It is a flying machine,” Serena answered over her shoulder, “only this one does not seem to fly so well.”
“If they are not djenoum we should kill them now and take their bags,” said another. The crash had strewn luggage everywhere across the sand, including Henri’s sextant and a barometer that gleamed bronze in the light. There were several leather boxes, a valise, fine cloaks, and water flasks. It was clear to the Tuareg that these were men of means who carried vast wealth and mysterious devices, no doubt employing evil spirits to accomplish their ends.
“We should kill them and burn what they carry,” said another. “They are vile, they are ikufar.” It was the word for “heathen,” used to describe the primitive people of Europe. Several of the others murmured assent.
Gascon eyed the Tuareg suspiciously. Their language was nothing more than gibberish to his ear, but he knew menace well enough when he heard it. He studied the group as he instinctively calculated his battle strategies, looking for any weaknesses to exploit. There weren’t many. They were armed and mounted well above him, and had tightened the semi-circle they formed around him and the count. His eyes moved among them, noting the lances and swords and the well-worn silver hilts of knives he could see. There would be other weapons that he could not see, blades hidden beneath the folds of cloth. These men were fighters, of that he was certain; and without better weapons he and the count would be no match against their number. Gascon wore only his knife, and knew the count had no weapon at all. He glanced around at the wreckage, wondering where he might find one of the rifles. There had been no reason to keep them at the ready during the flight, and now they were nowhere to be seen.
The worst of it was that he couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t read their expressions. He knew these were no more than mortal men, that it was nothing but the cloth over their faces that so unsettled him. Yet he felt naked before them.
“I don’t like the looks of them, sire,” he said in a low voice.
“The man eating sand doesn’t like the looks of us?” The woman spoke sharply in French, so startling Gascon that he almost jumped. And then she laughed, and it was a warm and genuine laugh that echoed delightfully off the sides of the boulders nearby and helped to shatter the tension; and in spite of himself, Henri laughed too. Gascon did not share in their enjoyment of his appearance, but wiped a hand across his face, which was smeared with the grit of the wadi floor. The rest of the Tuareg had not understood the exchange, for among them only Serena spoke French. Henri spoke immediately.
“Mademoiselle, I am Henri deVries of France. My companion here who eats sand is Gascon.” He gave a slight bow. “I am surprised to find you here and very pleased that you speak French.”
“That was quite a crash, Henri deVries.”
“That wasn’t a crash,” he responded, much too quickly and a bit defensively. “It was a hard landing.” She laughed again. “Had you been on a camel and done that, I would call it a crash, and afterward the camel would have bitten you for the ride.”
“Then it is well I was not riding a camel,” Henri said, grinning. He enjoyed this woman.
“Serena! What does he say?” Tamrit ag Amellal, the lead rider, was annoyed by her laughter and uncomfortable that he didn’t understand what was being said. He was accustomed to being in charge. She ignored him. “From where have you come with your balloon?” “From Bou Saada.”
“Bou Saada! That is across the Grand Erg!”
“Yes. We have been two nights in the air.”
“And where were you going?”
Henri shrugged. “Morocco.”
Serena looked at him in astonishment. “Morocco! Monsieur, you have crashed three weeks’ ride from Morocco!”
“Yes, I know. The wind was wrong.”
“How can the wind be wrong?”
“It did not go where I hoped it would go.”
“You fly your machine with hope?”
“No – yes, I suppose so.” The desert woman was tangling him up.
“Then you would do better with a camel.” She looked at the sky. “Even the camel knows this wind will take you to the Tanezrouft.” She waved to the southwest. “But for your crash, your hope would have taken you there, and there you would have perished. Nothing lives in the Tanezrouft,” she said matter-of-factly. “Nothing at all.”
“I would have been all right,” Henri insisted.
“Yes, you would have been all right, and then when your water ran out you would have been dead. It is lucky for you we have passed this way.”
“Where are you going?”
“Arak,” she said, pointing to the southeast, “at the foot of the Atakor.”
Serena turned to Tamrit and rapidly explained in Tamashek what she had learned. Excited murmurs of disbelief arose among the Tuareg. Bou Saada! None of them had been there, but each knew of the village that lay on the other side of the great mountains. The great sand Erg was impassable, a field of death. To go around it took weeks of hard riding by camel. They had seen for themselves how the balloon had flown, but the thought of it having come directly over the Erg was inconceivable, preposterous!
“They lie!” said one. “It is clearly the work of the djenoum! We should kill them now!”
“Djenoum or not, we must kill them!”
“Eoualla, I say yes!”
“It is agreed!”
“No!” Serena spoke sharply. “We will take them and their flying machine to the amenokal. He will be amused by it. He can decide what is to become of them!”
“Bah! Their flying machine! It crashes better than it flies! Behold, it lies in ruin among the rocks! No sane man would venture in it!”
“They did!”
“They are not sane, they are French!”
“Where the French go, horror follows. They are thieves and killers. The Arabs of the northern country have suffered at their hands. They must die!”
“The Arabs of the north deserve the French!”
As the discussion among them grew more heated, Henri spoke quietly to Gascon. “Do you know where the rifles fell?”
“I cannot see them, sire. I’ll have to look more closely. There is wreckage everywhere.”
“Then do it now, quickly, while they argue. If you find them be ready to throw me one, but don’t take it up yet. If you don’t see them I have a pistol in the valise there. Be ready, look sharp. I think they are discussing whether to use swords or lances on us. If anything happens make for those rocks.” He indicated two large boulders sitting close to each other, backed by a sandstone wall. They gave scant sanctuary, but were better than nothing.
“Oui, mon comte.”
Gascon moved toward the ruins of the basket. As he did so, Tamrit shouted. “That one! He goes for weapons! They will have rifles! Stop him!” He raised his lance. Others drew swords and produced knives from among the folds of their robes. Gascon’s hand went to the knife at his belt while Henri, unarmed, could do nothing but step back.
“Hold!” Serena’s voice lashed out. She saw the situation getting out of hand and knew she had to act. She surprised herself with what she did next, with her lie. “Leave them, Tamrit. It is too late. I have already given them my protection. I have granted them the Amán of safe passage.”
Tamrit exploded at her.
“By what right have you done this?”
“I have the right, Tamrit, you know it well. They may pack their flying machine on camels and ride with us to Arak.”
“No, Serena! I lead!”
She snorted. “It is done! I have done it!”
Tamrit was furious. He stamped his lance into the ground. “I will not honor this!”
“Then you will dishonor us all, and answer to the amenokal!”
Tamrit swore. This woman was too independent, too strong-headed. He was hopelessly in love with her. He had courted her for two years, brought her gifts of camel meat and fine cloth, written poems to her, done everything a man could do. But she was impossible, and now she bullied him and humiliated him before the others. Cursed woman! She was right, of course. Whether he liked it or not, if she had granted safe passage he had no choice but to honor it. At least, he thought, until the proper opportunity arose.
Serena saw his hesitation and knew the momentum was hers. She had to finish it. She moved her camel forward to Henri. She spoke quickly, with authority.
“They thought you looked for weapons. I assured them that was not the case, but if you have weapons and attempt to use them against us you will die quickly, Henri deVries. I will kill you myself. You have the offer of safe passage if you wish it. You may ride with us to Arak, where you will show your flying machine to our leader. From there you may find transport among traders returning to the north.”
Henri hesitated. He considered his options, which at the moment were limited. He didn’t know whether he could trust the word of this woman. She fascinated him and seemed influential among the others. Clearly her words carried much weight. It was extraordinary, that she seemed to so dominate the men. What African woman – or European woman, for that matter – had he ever seen do that? He had wandered the souks and medinas of the northern towns and villages where the women were timid chattel, veiled nonentities kept under lock and key by fathers and husbands who subjugated them and punished them like mules. This woman was certainly no chattel, and here it was the men who wore the veils. What manner of people were these? Tales of Tuareg treachery abounded in the north, reports of scores of murdered travelers. Yet they had offered safe passage. If the fabric of the balloon was too badly damaged he knew they might not be able to repair it. And if what the woman said about the wind was true, the right wind might never arrive anyway. To walk out alone might be impossible. Even if they attempted it, he and Gascon might then encounter a different party that would kill them on sight.
Serena heard more murmurs behind her and knew that further delay was dangerous, that she could lose control of the situation at any moment. “You must answer quickly,” she urged him. “Your life depends on it.”
Henri glanced at Gascon, who had weighed their chances and thought it prudent to accept. Gascon nodded.
“Your offer is accepted with thanks,” Henri said. “We are honored to accompany you.”
“Then it is done,” Serena said.
Henri and Gascon folded the balloon, gathered up the scrambled remnants of their baggage, and placed everything in a pile. Henri found the rifles, which had gotten jammed into the sand underneath a broken piece of the basket. Cautiously, moving so that everything he did could be seen and not misinterpreted, he wrapped the rifles in a blanket and placed them inside a basket that was to be loaded on one of the pack camels. One of the Tuareg, a man called Buzu who wore all-white robes, waved them away brusquely when it was time to load the camels. He handled the task himself, hissing and cursing and goading the animals to do his bidding without excessive complaint. Buzu was the only one working, while the other Tuareg sat in silence in the shade. If they were not overtly hostile, they seemed withdrawn and unfriendly.
When at last they were ready to depart, Henri found himself provided with a riding camel of nasty disposition. The camel is an animal of contrasts, able to adopt a demeanor that is either terribly awkward or immensely dignified, depending upon its mood. It further possesses the ability to look altogether natural in either guise. As Henri’s mount rose from its knees to a standing position, a process in which the rider is first thrown violently backward, then forward, then backward again, it jerked viciously, nearly toppling Henri in the process and causing him to slide sideways around the neck, until he was hanging on in a most precarious fashion. It was at that very moment that Serena, already mounted, rode up.
“Well, monsieur, I believe you looked better in the balloon,” she said brightly, and it took all of her effort to keep a straight face.
Henri looked at her sheepishly and felt himself flushing. He struggled back to an upright position and settled himself in the leather webbing of the saddle. As he did so he noticed that his pouch had fallen on the ground. For a long moment he just stared at it, wondering how to get it back without the complete loss of his dignity. Gascon was already up, as was everyone else. Then Serena saw it too and quickly appreciated his dilemma. “I’ll get it,” she said. She slid off her mount in an instant, snatched it up, handed it back to him, and remounted her camel without its kneeling again. Her movements were lithe and graceful, and Henri watched her appreciatively.
“Merci,” he said, nodding in gratitude. “How many days’ ride to Arak?”
“Eight.”
“After eight days I will be the picture of grace at this.”
She laughed. “Or the camel will be riding you.”
They rode hard, setting off in single file through the narrow wadi that wound its way off the plateau. Mile after mile passed by and they did not stop or slow or talk. The camels were superb animals in top condition. They kept a rapid pace, maintaining a steady rhythm as their hooves plodded through the soft sand of the wadi. Henri watched the Tuareg ride, crossing his legs over the camel’s neck as he saw them do, but his animal would not respond to the movements of his feet. His mount occasionally tried to break away to graze on brush or the sparse foliage they passed, but he reined it in tightly. As he pulled on the nose ring the camel glared at him balefully, and once tried to bite him. He could only hope that during the journey he would be able to settle into a strained coexistence with the beast.
Henri pulled a small notebook from his pocket and tried to make sketches and notes as they rode, but the rocking motion of the camel made it impossible. He put the book away and contented himself just watching, enjoying the view from the great height of his camel’s back. After a time the wadi broadened, and soon he found himself next to Serena.
“I am pleased, Monsieur deVries. You have stayed on the camel all this way!”
“He is waiting until tonight to unload me as he wishes,” Henri admitted ruefully. “I think he would rather I’d stayed in the balloon. I shall have to remember not to turn my back on him.”
She showed him the Tuareg manner of sitting in the saddle and holding the rein, and how to make the camel respond to his feet, a task for which he had to remove his shoes. But the camel wouldn’t cooperate. It complained loudly and spit in disgust, much to her delight. “It must be your French toes,” she said.
“How is it you speak French so well?” Henri asked her.
“In the spring of my tenth year a small group of us traveled to El Gassi,” she said. “I became separated from the group and fell from some rocks. I broke my leg so badly the bone came through the skin. No one with us knew what to do. The marabout who would normally care for such an injury was not with us, and I could not travel. There was a White Father living in the town, a French missionary from Algiers. He knew what to do and set the leg. And when I developed fever and nearly died, he tended to me. I was there a long time, and could not rise from my mat. It was then he taught me to speak the language.”
“He did it very well.”
“He was a kind man. He grew vegetables and gave them away though he had not enough to eat himself. He tried to convert me to his religion, as he tried with others. But for all his effort he made not a single convert. And then one day someone cut the father’s throat. My lessons were finished.” He was startled by the matter-of-fact way she said it, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. The Shamba, I think.” She used the word as a curse. The Shamba were Arabs of the north central oases, while the Tuareg were Berbers. For centuries there had been a blood feud between them, with caravan raiding and looting of camps embittering one generation after another. “They are devout of Islam and have no patience for the White Fathers. It was only a matter of time until someone did it.”
“How is it the Shamba left you alone?”
“They are ben haloof,” she said, “but even sons of pigs will not harm a girl. The father had hidden me anyway, to be sure. He was worried about my safety. In the end he worried about the wrong throat. They would have taken me hostage, I suppose, had they known I was there, and traded me back to my people. The Shamba despise us worse than… well, than you, and would do anything to bring us harm. They have never been able to master us or bring us to their ways. When we meet in battle they always get worse than they give. It is intolerable for them. They call us the abandoned of God, but God has not abandoned us, as you see. He is all around us.” With a sweep of her hand she indicated the remarkable country through which they traveled. To their west lay a long, low range of dunes, their slopes rippled with hard sand that shimmered like copper in the sun. To the east a flat was strewn with pebbles in colors ranging from salmon to deep purple. A plateau rose before them, its face fractured with jagged gorges to whose sides clung stubborn thorn trees on which bright flowers blossomed. There was no monotony to it, nothing bleak or empty. For Henri it was a world of variety and surprise.
The wind had blown her hair into her face. She brushed it back, and as she did Henri found himself staring at her. He was struck by the complexity of this woman of the desert, who spoke so frankly and whose spirit was so free, who could laugh so easily and completely enjoy herself with simple things, and yet in the next moment deal just as readily with death. The Sahara was a harsh environment that bred tough people. He had no doubt that if need be she could kill a man just as easily as – just as easily as kiss him. She was fresh and a little insolent. He liked that, the insolence, for it was so apart from what he always experienced. He was accustomed to women who fawned over him for his money or position. This woman would be unimpressed by both. She seemed to have everything she needed atop her camel.
With a start he realized that he hadn’t been listening to what she was saying. She caught his gaze and held it for a moment, then dropped her eyes as she continued talking.
“… the northern oases, and there I had a chance to practice the language with the French settlers. Then two years ago I accompanied my uncle to Algiers. He is a great marabout, and has taught me much.” She explained that marabouts were holy men who taught religion and served as physicians and instructed the Tuareg in astronomy, geography, botany, reading and writing. “I waited there while he made the pilgrimage to Mecca. It was there I saw a balloon. One that flew, that is.”
It was springtime in the desert, warm but not hot. They rode comfortably as midday became afternoon, and the long afternoon hours stretched into early evening. They talked without stopping, riding alongside each other and all but oblivious to the others, who had stretched out into a long languid procession. The countryside gradually flattened, the ground changing from the coarse sand of the wadis to a blend of finer sand mixed with colorful stones. Henri and Serena talked easily and endlessly about scores of things, about birds they saw and plants that could be eaten and plants that would kill you, about the sultan in Istanbul (was it true, she wanted to know, that he bathed in a golden tub?), about ships that plied the Mediterranean, about horned lizards and snakes, about the desert and its weather, its nights and its floods, its quirks and its beauty. She seemed to know everything about it, and saw it all through eyes that were observant and sensitive and engaged. Once she spotted something in the distance and without a word rode off to get it. When she returned she held a delicate sand rose, a desert blossom sculpted by eons of wind. She held the gift out to him as they rode. He had to lean to take it and nearly lost his balance, but she caught him and steadied him with her free hand, and pressed the rose to him with her other, and their palms touched lightly. The touch was a fleeting one, but there was a moment of magic in it for them both. Gently he murmured his thanks and looked at the rose. Its crystals blazed brilliantly in the sun. He placed it carefully into the inside pocket of his cloak.
They traded tales of the places they had seen. She held her breath at his description of the Seine, flowing in a slow lazy arc past his home, of the snow that covered the peaks of France, and of the icefields he had crossed in Scandinavia, She told him of the great caravan routes and of caves where ancient rock paintings showed that what was now her desert home had once been a fertile jungle full of animals. She delighted him with tales of ostrich hunts that lasted two or even three days, and pointed out places where there would be water, places he would never have thought to look, and she told him of the thunder noise that the dunes made when the sun was coming up. There was too much to say, so much to share, and it all came in a rush between them that consumed the whole day.
Twice Tamrit rode back to her and told her to stop her foolish talk with the Frenchman and to conduct herself with more dignity. Twice she responded with fire in her voice and sent him away, sulking and miserable. He despaired at the chasm that separated him from what he desired and what he could have. Serena had spurned many suitors over the years. Tamrit knew that he had come closer than any of the others to winning her, but this afternoon he had suddenly seen with startling clarity the contrast between the way that she responded to him and the way she behaved with the Frenchman. He loved to hear her laugh, it was true, but it tore at him to hear the difference in the tone of her laughter with this accursed ikufar. She never sounded like that with him, never acted that way or laughed so easily. She was always so distant, so unattainable. And her talk! Tamrit had trouble getting twenty words out of her, yet she hadn’t stopped chattering all day to this devil-of-the-sky. At first there was more ache than anger in him, but each passing hour he was forced to endure it shifted the balance until he was seething inside. He spurred his camel viciously and rode ahead for a while, but gave that up when he realized it made him look foolish and feel even more isolated from her. It would be better to stay closer in order to keep an eye on things. He selected a position to ride from which he could not help looking at them, even though he hated doing so. The afternoon wore long on his patience. Gradually his focus shifted away from her indifference and toward the interloper, his anger simmering against the Frenchman.
Gascon rode near the rear. He was puzzled by the behavior of the count, who was overly preoccupied, he thought, with the Tuareg woman. Gascon was still wary of their escort but took some comfort from the fact that while the rifles were out of reach on the back of a pack camel, he had at least succeeded in keeping the count’s valise with him, which contained a pistol.
When at last they stopped for the night, Henri found that he was quite sore from the ride. It was with a great sense of relief that he was able to get off his camel without making a spectacle of it. He realized that it mattered to him that this graceful desert woman not witness another bout of clumsiness on his part. When he acknowledged the thought he blushed privately and shook his head at the crazy notion. Why should it matter? he wondered.
Camp was quickly established by Buzu, who once again did all the work while the others did nothing. Henri and Gascon tried to help but he brushed them aside. “He is Irawellan,” Serena explained. “A slave. It is his task to mind the needs of the camp.” She explained their caste system to him. Except for Buzu all the men of her party were noblemen, warrior-overlords who acted as guides and guardians to caravans, and patrolled their districts against attack. In other Tuareg camps there were marabouts. The imrad were vassals who worked the land and tended the herds and paid levies for protection, and sometimes accompanied the nobles as their squires. At the end of the chain were the slaves who cultivated gardens and tended to the livestock and saw to the needs of travel. The social order she described, like the appearance of their men, struck Henri as medieval.
Buzu unloaded and hobbled each of the camels by folding a foreleg up and tying it with rope, then leaving it to wander as it sought its meager pasture. Henri watched the slave start a fire, a process that required no steel or flint. He rubbed a small green stick sharpened like a pencil down the length of a dry stick, creating a small channel into which dry bits of wood fiber were rubbed off and collected at one end. The small pile grew and began to smoke, finally igniting. He put a battered tin pot on the fire for tea. Then he heated a thick millet porridge, which started as a paste to which he added a small quantity of nearly black water from his goatskin.
The group squatted around the fire, Henri and Gascon with them. They passed the bowl of porridge around a circle, each person taking a bite with a wooden spoon before passing it to the next. The Tuareg revealed nothing of themselves as they ate, for they did not lower their veils to eat, but rather lifted them and turned away as they brought the spoon up under the cloth covering their mouths. The porridge was filling, but brackish and dry and full of sand. Henri didn’t notice. He was watching her. For dessert they ate dates that were kept fresh in leather pouches, and drank tea. As Serena translated Henri answered a thousand questions from the Tuareg men, who, except for Tamrit, seemed to have gotten over their initial hostility and had accepted their presence. Soon they were all laughing.
Tamrit kept to himself, hunched over by the fire. He sat quietly, ignoring the chatter. He was no longer angry at the intruders. His anger had been replaced with a plan. He knew what to do. Their journey to Arak had brought them very near Shamba country. He had a Shamba knife taken from a corpse during a raid. It would be a simple enough matter to steal up on the French devils in the middle of the night and silently cut their throats. He would leave the knife where anyone could see that the perfidious Shamba had been at it again. Only Serena would have doubts or even care, and he would deal with her.
Gascon looked about for the best place to sleep. He didn’t want to camp close to the Tuareg. He would not trust what he could not see, and their faces were hidden. He had shared his concerns with the count, who had only shrugged. It was not like the count to let his guard down, Gascon reflected, but he seemed truly unconcerned. Well, then, he would watch for both of them. He selected a spot on the opposite side of the fire from where the balloon and their other supplies sat in a pile. While he knew he couldn’t easily get to the rifles, he didn’t want anyone else getting to them either. He satisfied himself that it was the best position available. He would sleep with the valise as his pillow and keep one hand on the gun.
When darkness fell and the moon had not yet risen, Henri took his sextant and with Serena at his side walked over the gravelly plain toward a dune. The pebbles blended with sand and the sand became deeper, making for hard work. The dune was much higher and farther away than it had looked from camp. When they arrived at the top he sat cross-legged and began his sightings. He explained to her the workings of the sextant, making diagrams in the sand to illustrate how knowing the time and the position of the stars could tell him where he was. She grasped the concept quickly and eagerly, nodding her head in excitement, then sighting the stars herself. He pointed at the different stars he sometimes used. “That is Vega,” he said, “and Cepheus, and there—”
“Is Rigel,” she interrupted, “in Orion,” and she went on and on, pointing at other stars and constellations, here Pegasus, there Cassiopeia and Delphinus, names that to his astonishment were the same or similar to those he knew. Though she couldn’t tell him where the names came from, she knew them all, it seemed, knew more than he did, and she had stories for some, taught her by the marabout.
By the low light of a candle Henri marked their position on his map. He sketched the rough features of the terrain they had passed that day, and showed her where he had marked Bou Saada and the Grand Erg. She took his pencil and with a hand that was swift and sure drew more for him on the paper, much more, adding Timimoun and Arak and beyond it the great Tassili Hoggar, the high volcanic massif in the deep desert that was her home. She sketched in riverbeds and mountains and prominent features of the land, hesitating only slightly as she gauged where to place them. She worked quickly and confidently, and even without a sextant, Henri had no doubt that her markings would be reasonably close. She knew her subject well.
He was surprised at the extent of the mountains she drew. “I had thought there would be more… emptiness,” he said. “More sand.”
“There is plenty enough of that,” she laughed, “but there is much more to this land than the dunes. It is a wondrous place, as rich with life as it is with death. If you have a bigger paper,” she promised, “I will make a better map.”
The moon rose huge over the plain before them. They looked at it through field glasses and gazed at the majesty of the view. The campfire flickered in the distance. The cold made them shiver and Henri pulled a blanket over their shoulders, and produced a flask of wine. She coughed when she drank but it warmed her, and they sat there for hours, chattering and laughing. When it was very late they reluctantly came down off the dune and said good night.
Tamrit burned inside as he watched them return. His eyes had never left them. He pretended to be asleep as she passed his mat.
Later Serena lay awake on her mat and stared at the moon, dazzling white overhead. Her mind was on fire with the Frenchman. She felt the sweet stirrings of something beginning and reveled in it, for beginnings were such exquisite times. She struggled with her feelings, unsure and a little uncomfortable, knowing that everything was wrong with a relationship between cultures, yet not caring, not really caring at all. She only knew that she loved his company, that she had never felt so warm and happy beside another man. These are the foolish thoughts of a stupid girl, she told herself. How can I think these things? I have known him for less than a day. But such a wonderful day. She would let it develop as it would, in its own way.
Suddenly the soft strains of a flute broke the night silence of the camp, and for the thousandth time since the balloon had fallen a smile came to her face. She hadn’t seen him with an instrument, but she knew at once it was he who played, and not Gascon. There was something in the melody that was the Frenchman, something gentle and sweet and warm. It was the custom of the Tuareg for a man to compose poems for the woman he loved in the ceremony of ahal, to demonstrate his feelings for her with a gift of verse. She knew that Henri would not know this, but she chose to make his music her private ahal. She let herself imagine that he was playing just for her, that they were alone under the moon and the stars, and she closed her eyes and lost herself in its magic. It was enchanting to her, that this man from Europe could know so well how to capture this place with music. It was a desert song he played, a song that brought to mind the lovely chant of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from his minaret, a song of mystery that sang of the flowing of the sands and the passage of time and the beautiful slow steady rhythm of life.
And then the music stopped, and she slept.
Much later, just before dawn, Tamrit set his cover aside and rolled silently off his mat. He listened for a moment to be certain no one stirred in the camp. A wind had picked up. It would help cover the sounds of his movement. Carrying the Shamba knife in one hand, he began his stealthy crawl toward the sleeping Frenchmen. The killers would leave no trail, for the ground was hard and rocky. There would be no way for anyone to determine from whence they had come, or where they had fled. There was nothing he could do about the moon, but he would be operating away from the rest of the sleeping Tuareg, and knew that if the Frenchmen saw anything it would not matter, for it would be the last thing they saw. He would kill deVries first, then the other one, and leave the knife and crawl back to his mat. After dawn someone else would find the bodies and raise the alarm. It would be someone else who would accuse the Shamba. Tamrit would be outraged along with the rest of them, and it would be done.
He moved quickly through the silent forms and baggage of the camp. No one moved and the camels were quiet. He stayed in a crouch as he approached the Frenchmen, his feet sure and steady. He had done this a score of times before, in caravans and camps, to the Shamba and his other enemies. It was pathetically easy at this time of night, when men slept most soundly. The blade was sharp and would slice cleanly through the flesh.
He arrived at the sleeping form of Henri, which was covered by a cloak. Tamrit steeled himself. He reached forward to draw back the edge of the cloak.
The voice hissed low and deadly and stunned him like a blow.
“If your word is so easily abandoned, Tamrit, do not abandon mine.” The dark form of Serena stood behind him. She held one of the lances and was poised to use it. “By all that is holy to you, touch him and I will run you through.” The hard steel tip of the lance prodded the folds of cloth at the nape of his neck. At the same instant she spoke, Gascon’s blanket moved. His pistol was cocked and pointed squarely at Tamrit’s forehead. He had watched them both coming. He had no idea what the woman had said and briefly wondered if he would have to shoot her too, but when he saw the position of her lance he understood.
Then Henri stirred and startled them all. He was not under the cloak on the mat, but had been sitting with his back to the basket of the balloon. More than an hour earlier, unable to sleep and unheard by anyone, he had moved to the packs to sit and watch the sky. He was awake and held a knife.
The magnitude of his defeat shook Tamrit to the quick of his being. He had been completely humiliated by two ikufar and the woman he loved. He made no pretense of innocence. Dishonored and alone, he left the camp before dawn. He took one camel and his simple possessions and headed off across the plain. He rode without a destination, his mind in turmoil. When the sun came up he dismounted from his camel. He prepared himself in the ritual manner, placing his prayer mat toward Mecca and using sand rather than water for his ablutions. His voice rang strong through the emptiness as he recited his litany of prayers. When he had finished he added a silent vow of holy vengeance upon the infidel Henri deVries, upon his life and his descendants and his possessions. He swore it in the name of Allah, and swore it for his sons unborn. Afterward he scooped out some sand to make a hollow and with dried vegetation made a small fire. He brewed a pot of tea and ate a handful of dates. Once again he mounted his camel and began to ride. It would be more than twenty years before anyone in the deVries family would see him again.
The next night Serena took Henri by the hand and led him out of camp. No words passed between them, for words were not needed. They climbed to the top of another dune, this time where no one could watch. Henri threw down his cloak and made a soft bed in the sand and they made love under the stars, oblivious to the cold, touching, exploring, clinging to each other, laughing and crying quiet tears of joy. They stayed awake all through a night of whispers and promises and shared hopes and watched the sun come up over the gravelly plain.
They moved through the rest of the journey to Arak as if through a dream, where all the edges were soft and everything felt both real and unreal and fragile and desperately wonderful. They lost all sense of time, except to notice that it seemed to pass too quickly. One day stretched into the next. They slept little, instead sharing every moment, fighting sleep for fear of missing even one second of it, then holding each other tightly when at last sleep came to take them. Neither of them had ever known anything like it, ever felt so consumed by the fire and ecstasy of love first discovered. They shut out the Tuareg and Gascon and moved through the days in a private place that only the two of them shared, eating alone and riding together as they embarked on a slow passionate journey of discovery of each other’s minds and bodies. They played games in the sand, tumbling down the sides of dunes. He taught her how the French danced, and she taught him how the Tuareg danced, and they mixed it together and collapsed in hilarity at the end of it all, and made love again.
Their approach to Arak was announced by a sudden riot of color and wild geological turbulence. Serena pointed out highlights of a landscape that looked to Henri as though Dante must have made it. It was the gateway to the Hoggar, a massive basalt plateau of the high desert that was the fortress of the Tuareg during those times of the year when the rains and forage were good. There were sudden steep walls and massive boulders strewn upon the sands, and Henri was struck dumb by the beauty, by the oddity of it all. Spectacular cathedrals of rock stood before him, towering great monuments of violet and mauve with spires and parapets, and he moved before them in a silence approaching reverence, as he might have moved through a church. For two days more they passed through valleys and across plateaus, until they stood in the camp of the Hoggar Tuareg.
The amenokal of the Hoggar Tuareg, Sultan El Hadj Akhmed, lord of the Tuareg tribes, master of the central Sahara, sat back on his haunches in his red-roofed tent and thundered at his sister. He was a man accustomed to having his way. His commands affected the lives of entire villages and tribes. His whims altered trade and commerce in vast regions of the desert. Yet now he sat nearly impotent before his sister, who would not listen. He had been making preparations to break camp, to travel with a salt caravan over the southern route to Bilma, when Serena had suddenly announced her intention of marrying a foreigner who had fallen from the sky in a balloon. She would leave everything – her family, her people, her way of life, and return with him to France.
Just like that.
And in all of this she had not asked. She had decreed. At his side sat the marabout Moulay Hassan, a revered and wise man who was also his uncle. Across from them sat Serena, and next to her sat the source of the amenokal’s present troubles, Count Henri deVries.
The count sat quietly; there was nothing Henri could say. He knew only that the discussion was heated, and he could guess the content easily enough without knowing the words or seeing any face but hers. She was tough, he thought, and she was standing up to, them, taking a terrible verbal beating, but giving no quarter, setting her jaw and leaning forward, sometimes clenching her fists, shrugging, waving, shaking her head. He watched her with admiration. She is a wondrous woman.
They had been arguing for the better part of the afternoon, and for the amenokal it was not going well. He had tried everything: persuasion, bribery, orders, threats. Nothing had worked. He had begun at the logical place, by simply forbidding it.
“You cannot!” she retorted.
“I can and will! I will have him killed and take you prisoner!”
“Raise a hand against him and I will cut it off! If you lock me up it will have to be until the day I die, for I will have no other man but this one.” She looked at Henri and spoke with fierce conviction. “Accept my word, Brother, for I have given it.”
The amenokal sighed. Had Serena been able to see behind the blue cloth, she would have seen a face that was weary and discouraged. He was often certain that the Arabs knew better when it came to the treatment of women, w’allahi! When a man decided his daughter or sister was to be married, or not married, that was that. The discussion was limited, simple, the transaction finished. Life lived in such a manner was manageable, predictable, serene. A Tuareg woman could be more contrary than a camel, and Serena could be more stubborn than any ten of them together.
The amenokal regarded Henri. He looks strong enough. His face shows character. But he is ikufar. He is wrong for Serena. He is trouble. And if they marry I shall be rich, but I shall never have an heir. It was true that the Frenchman had pledged a dowry unheard-of in his memory. Six hundred camels, he had promised. Six hundred! A vast fortune! Henri had started with four hundred, and at that stupendous amount the amenokal had gasped. Assuming the gasp meant his initial offer was too low, Henri immediately raised it. Then he had presented the amenokal with a pouch of gold and silver coins and a rifle with ammunition. The delighted amenokal had fired it with stunning inaccuracy, missing a huge boulder at a hundred paces, while everyone smiled and pretended he’d shot well.
But more than dowry, more than any wealth the Frenchman might bestow, the amenokal wanted an heir, someone to command the tobol of the Tuareg after he died, to preserve their standing as princes of the desert, to retain their traditions. It was on this matter that he could tolerate no union between them.
“You could marry so well! Men of a hundred families would give all to have you!”
“Hah! They care nothing for me. They would marry me to father the next amenokal. Nothing more.”
“You are both wrong and too harsh, Sister. You are a woman to treasure. Yet that is not the point. This man is of a different world. He looks solid enough. But it is neither he who concerns me, nor your contentment. It is your unborn son.”
“There is no son!”
“There will be.”
“When there is we will discuss it.”
“Then it will be too late, when what is done is done. Now is the time to consider his life. There will be a son, Serena. And he will not be of us, and he will not be of the French.”
“He will be of me. He will be of his father.”
“It is not enough. A man needs a tribe. A man needs to belong. Bring a son into the world who does not belong, and you condemn him to a life in between. That is a life no mother should choose for her son. That is a life no child should be forced to live. It is a cruel thing to do, Serena. A selfish thing.”
She lowered her head when he said that, so that he could not see her eyes. He had found that place inside her that was the most vulnerable, through an appeal to her sense of duty to children yet unborn. Was she being selfish? Which mattered more, that she follow the longings of her heart, or that she provide the amenokal with a perfect heir? There was no guarantee that her own son would even be the heir. While succession to leadership of the Tuareg was matrilineal, there were others who might succeed El Hadj Akhmed first, including her own cousin Ahitagel, the son of Serena’s mother’s sister. But fate might someday make her son that leader. To become amenokal was a desperately difficult path for any boy or man to follow, all the more so if his veins carried the mixed blood of her union with Henri. She knew all that, yet there was no argument within her strong enough to overcome her feelings for the man sitting beside her. She knew what she must do.
“If it is the child’s destiny to be amenokal, if he is the right one, then his blood will not matter. And if he is not the right one, pure blood will not help.”
“Speak sense to her,” the amenokal said to the marabout, raising his hands in supplication. Moulay Hassan had been Serena’s teacher, her guide as she grew from infant to girl to woman. He had been her surrogate father since her own had died. He was as close to her, as influential with her as anyone among the Tuareg. She had been one of his prized students, a quick study whose questions soon outpaced his answers, whose mastery of Tuareg lore and the sciences outstripped his own. It was because he knew her well that he knew it was useless. He had seen her set her mind, as he had seen her do so many times before. She would not be deterred. But to please the amenokal he tried mightily, and failed miserably. Serena was master of her will.
“I will miss you, child,” said the marabout when he finally gave in. His eyes misted. “But promise to bring the boy back to know his own one day. Bring him back to know his great-uncle.”