High above a mountain valley a girl sat sitting beneath a tree, gazing out over the landscape. She had a striking face, strong and distinctive, with a long, straight nose, bold black eyes and an uncompromising chin. No one ever called her pretty or likened her to delicate things – to moonlight or gossamer or the tiny, elegant songbirds that soared in the twilight air. The men who had attempted (unsuccessfully) to woo her spoke in their clumsy verses of wild camels and the great winds of the desert: elemental things over which they could hope to have little control. They strove, and failed, to find rhymes for her name (Mariata); and she repaid their attention with verses as abrasive as a sandstorm and they soon went away.
She had been sitting very still for some time, staring into space as if concentrating hard on something just out of reach. The tree was on the crest of a rocky peak: on the horizon Mount Bazgan loomed as a shadowy presence, and it was from this mountain that the tribe amongst whom she now lived took its name. At this altitude the air was cool and scented with wild thyme and lavender, but even so you could sense the presence of the desert that lay beyond the hills.
A long moment passed in concentration and then she bent to make a mark in the sandy soil at her feet. As she did so a fly settled on her cheek, and then suddenly there were hundreds, an iridescent cloud of them. She swatted them away.
‘God curse all flies!’ What use were the vile things, with their pointless meandering and their stupid noise? And so many of them, thousands, all over the food, the animals, the babies. Surely if God were a woman, there would be no flies in the world. She could almost hear her mother’s voice scolding her for that: Mariata, you cannot say such things: have some respect!
But her mother was dead, and she was an outsider in the home of her father’s sister. She sighed, and dragged her mind back to the poem she was attempting to compose. An image hovered: she was just beginning to frame it in words when she heard someone approaching. Bones and dust! She shrank into the shadows. If she were disturbed, the poem would evaporate like spit on a hot stone. Sarid would pay her if it was good, and when the travelling smith came back she would be able to buy the earrings she had set her heart on. It was her first commission; if she did well, others would follow. It was demeaning to work for pay, but much to her disgust she depended on the charity of others now. Her Aunt Dassine and the other women of the Kel Bazgan treated her with no respect, and certainly not the respect someone of her lineage deserved. They even expected her to milk goats with her own hands – to bind them head to head and pull on their teats! It was disgusting. Everyone knew that such a task was designed only for the hands of the iklan. But, despite the lack of deference they accorded her, Mariata was beginning to wish she hadn’t moved so far away from the rest of the tribe.
She stilled her breathing. It was probably just a goatherd, but there were bandits in the region, who came by night to steal camels or goats, and recently stories had reached them of peasants murdered as they worked in the garden-farms, of brutal attacks on villages; and here she was, alone and a long way from the camp.
A twig cracked under someone’s foot and a moment later a figure moved into her line of sight: a man, his veil lying loose upon his chest. By this detail she knew he was alone and that he did not expect to meet any other man. By the lazy position of the veil and the carriage of the man’s head, Mariata knew that this was no bandit but Rhossi, the nephew of the chieftain. Only Rhossi was so arrogant as to think himself immune from the spirits.
The thought of him made her skin prickle. Rhossi had been watching her since her father left her with the Bazgan tribe: she had felt his gaze crawling over her whenever she crossed the encampment, when she danced with the other girls, practising steps for the wedding dances, when she sat beside the fire at night.
He wasn’t looking at her now; he was looking at the ground, touching something with the toe of his sandal. Perhaps he would pass by. She watched him kneel and touch the dry grass she had crushed underfoot. Then he raised his head, turned towards her and smiled.
‘Are you well there in the shadows, Mariata ult Yemma?’
She saw his eyes fix on her, gleaming. ‘Thanks be to God, I am well, Rhossi ag Bahedi,’ she said, bringing the edge of her headscarf across the lower part of her face. Over the top of it she glared at him, furious at being discovered.
He grinned. His teeth were sharp, each set slightly apart from the next. The other girls said he was handsome and flashed their eyes at him; but Mariata thought he had a face like a jackal’s, narrow and sly, and a regard that was calculating and without warmth even when his mouth was smiling.
‘And is it peace with you, Mariata?’
‘It is peace with me. Is it peace with you?’
‘With God’s blessing, it is peace, insh ‘allah.’ He kissed the palms of his hands, brought them down his face and touched his chest, just above the heart, all the while maintaining eye contact. It was politeness and piety personified, but somehow he managed to make the gesture obscene.
Mariata glared at him. ‘Are you a man, Rhossi ag Bahedi?’
He bridled. ‘Of course.’
‘I was always taught that only little boys and rogues go unveiled. Which are you?’
Rhossi grinned all the more widely. ‘I veil only in the presence of my betters, Tukalinden.’
Tukalinden. ‘Little Princess’. It was what some of the people of the tribe – those who honoured her lineage – had taken to calling her, for her mother’s bloodline could be traced directly back to Tin Hinan, through her daughter Tamerwelt, known as The Hare; but in Rhossi’s jackal-mouth the words were heavy with sarcasm.
Mariata got to her feet. Even grinding millet was preferable to passing time with the high chieftain’s nephew; even milking goats or collecting dung for the fire. She made to pass him, but he caught her by the shoulder. His fingers dug into her muscle, and it hurt.
‘And what is this in the sand, Mariata?’ He touched with a toe the symbols she had drawn there while trying to compose the poem; a word here and there to fix the images in her memory, amongst them yar, the circle crossed by a line, yagh, the closed cross, and yaz, the symbol for freedom, and for a man. He squinted at them, suspicious. ‘Have you been making sorcery?’ His grip tightened. ‘Are you casting spells?’
Idiot. He could not read. And he all of twenty-six or seven summers! Almost an old man. If he were able to read, he would have seen Kiiar’s name and Sarid’s too – the couple to be married next month; he would have seen the ideograms for palm trees and wheat, for a bird and for water. Her wedding poem so far regaled Kiiar thus:
Her skin resembles palm trees,
A garden of wheat, a flowering acacia.
Her braids are like the wings of a bird
Her glistening hair gleams with butter:
It mirrors the sun and the moon.
Her eyes are as round as a ring in the water
When it has been riven by a stone.
But this was lost on Rhossi. He had spent all his time learning swordplay and how to make his camel prance to show off to the girls, and none at all with reading; to him the symbols were nothing more than arcane marks; he could not perceive them as language, he could not understand them at all, and that which he did not understand made him afraid. He would know that women used symbols like these for making charms, harmless things for the most part; but not always, so she would let him think that, and serve him right for his ignorance. Besides, if he thought she made magic, he might just leave her alone.
‘Perhaps I am.’
She was gratified to see how Rhossi touched his amulet to ward away the evil eye, but then with a sudden flurry he stamped compulsively on the symbols.
Mariata cried out and made a grab for him, but he pushed her away and she fell back against the tree. ‘I’ll have no sorcerers in my tribe!’ he cried, kicking sand over the symbols, obliterating each one.
The poem was gone. Mariata knew well enough that she would never remember it perfectly. If she could use magic, she would do so now: she would send Rhossi to the demons, summon the Kel Asuf to consume his mind. She wanted to spit at him; she wanted to wound him, but she had seen how ferociously he beat his slaves. She got to her feet and furiously brushed the dust off her robe. ‘Your tribe?’
‘It will be soon enough.’ His uncle, Moussa ag Iba, had a painful growth in his gut and it was continuing to grow no matter what medicines he took for it. In the tradition of their people, the leadership would pass to the son of his sister.
‘Is that what you came all this way to tell me?’
‘No, of course not. How would I have known you were out here making spells?’
‘But you followed me, didn’t you?’
Rhossi’s gaze narrowed, but he did not say anything. Instead, he caught one of her hands, gave it a twist and pressed it high between her shoulder-blades, lifting her close to him. His face was so close to hers it was a blur and his breath was hot on her face. She could almost feel the spirits flowing out of him, the fire and madness of them. Then his mouth was upon hers. She clamped her lips closed and began to fight in earnest to escape him, but all he did was laugh.
‘If I want to kiss you, I will kiss you. When I am amenokal all the people of the Aïr will answer to me. Women will beg me to take them as my third or fourth wife, even my slave! Do you think you are better than them?’ He held her at arm’s length, watching her. Then he leant in close, his face darkening. ‘Or perhaps you think you are better than me?’ He could read the answer to that in her eyes. They were fearless eyes, dark and bold. And in that moment she could see that he hated her as much as he desired her. ‘You need to learn that you are not!’ He caught her by the hair, winding a hand in its black, silky length. ‘You give yourself such airs, filling the children’s heads with your stupid tales, boasting about your family, holding the Kel Taitok above us as if we are just some filthy vassal tribe. It’s time you were taught a lesson –’ He thrust his free hand hard between her legs and began to drag her robe up.
Mariata, crushed against him, was outraged. To touch a woman0020 without her permission was taboo: forbidden, punishable by exile, or even death.
Down in the valley a wild dog’s howl shivered in the air, followed by another and another and another. Something had disturbed them: normally they lay like dry, yellow carcases in untidy heaps in the shadows cast by the drystone terrace walls, while the harratin dug and weeded and watered on the other side. The howl hung in the valley like a vulture, buoyed up by the hot air currents; then faded away.
But the disturbance had broken the moment for Rhossi: his head came up; then he pushed Mariata away from him and walked fast to the crest of the hill, shading his eyes to see what had caught the dogs’ attention. Keeping a good distance between them, Mariata moved to where she could also stare down into the valley, but all there was to see was a figure making its way up the mountain path, a figure that eventually resolved itself into a woman in a black headscarf and a long, patched blue robe, her head bowed, her shoulders bent as if she bore a burden on her back. Mariata did not recognize her, but since she had only been with the Bazgan tribe for a few weeks, that was no surprise.
But Rhossi was staring at the woman as if he had seen a ghost. Mariata watched as he adjusted his veil, wrapping it swiftly around his face until just a slit remained. His eyes glimmered through the slit. He looked scared.
As if attracted by the movement, the woman looked up briefly and Mariata was surprised to see that she was old, her face a bag of wrinkles, her skin dark as acacia wood. She looked sad and exhausted; she looked as if she must have been driven by powerful forces to make this hard journey, up this steep, rocky path into another tribe’s territory. Was it hunger that drove her, Mariata wondered? Or did she bring news? Strangers usually had a tale to tell.
As if it was the most natural reaction in the world, Rhossi picked up a rock and hurled it at the old woman, hurled it with real venom. It struck the stranger hard and she cried out, spun and lost her footing, slipping on the loose scree of the path and falling with some force. At once, Rhossi was off and running, leaving Mariata fixed in place, staring down at the injured woman, complicit in the attack by the mere fact of her presence.
When the woman did not get up, Mariata shook off her torpor and climbed down through the scrub and thorn and rock. By the time she reached the stranger’s side, the old woman was groaning and trying to sit up. ‘Salaam aleikum,’ Mariata greeted her. Peace be upon you.
‘Aleikum as salaam,’ the old woman responded. On you be peace. Her voice was as harsh as a crow’s.
A claw-like hand clutched at Mariata’s robe, found her shoulder and began to haul. Mariata helped the old woman to sit upright. Her head-covering had fallen off, revealing a twist of dark braids that had been intricately plaited and knotted with scraps of coloured leather, beads and shells. Here and there were bright threads of silver: these were no ornament but hairs coloured by age. The eyes that searched Mariata’s face were a bright, deep brown, without the cloud of cataract: and though they were buried in a wealth of deep sun-lines, it seemed the visitor was not such a crone after all.
‘Are you all right?’ Mariata asked her.
‘Thanks be, I am well.’ But the woman winced as she moved her arm, and blood was beginning to soak through her robe where the rock had struck her.
‘You are bleeding. Let me look.’
But as Mariata reached to examine the wound, the woman caught her by the chin and stared intently into her face. ‘You aren’t a local girl.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘I come from the Hoggar.’
The woman nodded to herself and made a gesture of respect: it was an old-fashioned gesture, not one often made nowadays, when people were beginning to forget the old ways, the old hierarchies. ‘My name is Rahma ult Jouma, and you must be the daughter of Yemma ult Tofenat.’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘I have walked for eight days to find you.’
Mariata was appalled. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’
‘I had the honour to know your grandmother. She was a woman with extraordinary powers.’
Her grandmother had died years ago. Flashes of memory offered a tall figure, very grand, decked with silver and rather frightening, with fierce eyes and a nose as curved and sharp as an eagle’s beak.
‘Your grandmother communed with the spirits.’
Mariata’s eyes became round. ‘She did?’
‘She had great skill with words and she drove out demons; and I need someone who can do that. My son is dying. Someone has placed the evil eye upon him: he has been possessed by spirits. Every medicine woman and herbalist in the Adagh has visited him, every marabout and expert in Qur’anic texts, every bokaye; even a travelling magician from Tin Buktu. But no one has been able to help him. The Kel Asuf have him in their grip, and they care nothing for the Qur’an or for plants. It requires a specialist, and that is why I have walked so far to find you.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any magic in me,’ Mariata said. Secretly she was flattered. She liked to be considered different from the women of the Bazgan. ‘I can’t help you – I’m not a healer. I’m a poet.’
Rahma ult Jouma made a face. ‘Well, I can’t help that. All I know is that when I cast the bones they gave me your grandmother’s name.’
‘I am not my grandmother.’
‘You are the last of her line. The power of the Founder has been passed down through the women of your family.’
Mariata was beginning to think the stranger was herself mad, a poor, sun-touched vagrant, a baggara. The desert took its toll on many who lived within and around its fiery borders. She stood up and took a step away. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. I don’t have any magical powers.’
Rahma caught her by the arm. ‘I have come a long way to find you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She pulled away, but the older woman was not letting go. ‘I can’t imagine how you knew I was here, anyway.’
‘A travelling smith passed through our village and he told us a woman of the Iboglan was living amongst the Bazgan, a very imperious girl; fine-boned and asfar; and that she had asked that a pair of earrings bearing the symbol of the hare be made especially for her. Only a woman of Tamerwelt’s line would ask for such an icon.’
The smiths carried news and gossip far and wide. So that explained it. Mariata’s hand went to her face. It was true that her skin tone was lighter than that of women from the more southerly tribes; and the hare was the animal with which she and the women of her family had a special bond.
‘The smith said she had been left with the Bazgan by her father, that her mother was dead. He also said the nephew of the chieftain was paying her a lot of attention, but that she didn’t encourage his advances.’ And here, the old woman spat into the dirt. Her spittle was red with blood: in the fall she must have bitten her tongue.
Mariata looked away, uncomfortable. ‘And how did you know I was up here, so far from the camp?’
‘I passed a tall girl herding goats down in the valley. She told me where you were.’
That would be Naïma. Mariata had shared her bread with her on her way up the mountain, and the goatherd had given her some wild figs. Fate seemed to be conspiring against her. ‘She was the only one who knew I was here.’
‘Apart from the man who threw the rock at me.’
Mariata nodded, embarrassed.
‘Perhaps the son of Bahedi, the brother of Moussa.’
‘Rhossi, yes. How could you know that?’ You could tell a man of one tribe from the man of another by the way he wore his veil – an extra twist, a higher peak, a longer tail – but to be able to distinguish an individual from another tribe at such a distance? Surely that was impossible.
‘His actions marked him out to me. He is a coward. In that respect he resembles the other men of his family.’
Any man speaking of the amenokal’s kin like that would be forced to defend his words with his sword. It was as well they were alone, although Mariata had heard that sometimes the wind carried insults to the insulted, and so it was that feuds were continued.
‘You know his family, then?’
Rahma’s expression became guarded. ‘You could say that. Come, there isn’t any time to waste. It’s a long walk back to my village.’
Mariata laughed. ‘I’m not going with you! Besides, you’re in no fit state to make such a journey. You don’t look as if you’ve eaten or drunk in days. And now you’re hurt too; and look, your feet are bleeding.’
Rahma looked down. It was true: there was blood oozing between her toes, staining the worn and dusty leather of her sandals.
‘Come with me to the encampment. I’ll make sure you’re given food and water and a bed for the night, and maybe one of the men will take you back to your village tomorrow.’
The woman spat on the ground. ‘I shall never set foot amongst the Kel Bazgan ever again; it was with great misgiving that I have come this far.’
Mariata sighed. What a dilemma. She could hardly abandon a woman who had come so far to find her, and who had been injured in the process. ‘Come with me to the harratin: they will take care of you.’
Rahma ult Jouma smiled. ‘Such diplomacy. How like your grandmother you are.’ She patted Mariata’s hand.
Down in the valley the harratin, who worked the garden-farms for the tribal chieftains, had erected a village of little round huts made from river-reeds, mud and stones. They lived here all year, while the tribespeople led their traditionally nomadic life, travelling out along the ancient Saharan routes from one oasis to another, returning in the harvest season to take the crops they had financed, leaving the harratin the fifth they were due for their labour. Although they were used to Moussa ag Iba’s overseers visiting to check on the progress of the winter foodstuffs, the sight of two desert tribeswomen walking unaccompanied into their midst made even the children stop playing and stare. A group of old harratin women stood around in a circle, pounding grain in a mortar, their black skin greyed by the flying powder, the slack flesh on their arms shuddering with every impact. They stopped in mid-strike at the sight of Mariata and Rahma. Two younger women, weaving a rug on a tall upright loom, gazed through the grille of threads at the newcomers, their solemn, dark faces sliced by the bright wool. Even the old men paused in their basket-weaving. No one said anything.
At last one of the men got slowly to his feet and came forward, head high, eyes wary. He wore a patched and tattered robe; he did not look much like a headman, despite his air of authority. He made the customary greeting, then stared at the visitors, waiting.
Mariata explained that Rahma needed attention from a healer, and something to eat and drink. ‘I have nothing to give you in return now, but I’ll come back later with something for you, some silver –’
The elder laughed. ‘What use is silver to us? Plead for some respite for my people with the amenokal: that would be the best reward you could give us.’
‘I don’t think the amenokal knows the meaning of the word “respite”,’ Rahma said.
The elder looked surprised but said no more.
‘I’m not in a position to intervene with the amenokal for you,’ Mariata said gently. ‘But I will bring you tea and rice.’
The man put his hand to his chest and bowed. ‘Thank you, that would be most acceptable.’
Mariata turned to Rahma. ‘I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.’
‘Make sure you do: we must make haste.’
‘I won’t be going with you.’
‘Oh, I think you will. Look around. Can you condone what is happening here?’
Mariata was bemused. ‘What do you mean?’ It was just a normal harratin village, shabby and poorly put together.
‘Look: really look. Can’t you see they are starving?’
Mariata looked around, focusing on the details of the harratin life for the first time. The children were huge-eyed, their bellies bulging, their arms and legs like sticks. The adults looked exhausted, as if they had worked themselves half to death, the bright patterns of their robes mocking the dullness of their eyes, sunken cheeks and desperate expressions.
Rahma gestured to the rug the women were weaving. ‘Even that will be taken by Moussa’s people. They will have been given the wool and the design: the Kel Bazgan will sell it for profit and the harratin will get practically nothing for it.’ She walked over to the old women and said something to them in their own language, and they jabbered back. She gestured for Mariata to join her. ‘You see that? They have only the spoiled grain from which to make their flour, the ears they have garnered from amongst the chaff – not even the fifth part of the crop their contract stipulates. And see the children playing over there –’
Between the huts two lighter-skinned toddlers squatted in the mud, while a pair of older children, leaning against the wall of a hut, watched them wearily.
Mariata nodded. Rahma clicked her tongue. ‘Do the little ones look like true harratin children? I think not, with skin so fair. I think young Rhossi has been sowing his seed far and wide. The first child was made by force, they tell me; the second girl learnt enough from the first to make a bargain.’
On the way back to the encampment, Mariata once more passed Naïma with the tribe’s goats and for the first time noticed how very many of them there were – black and brown, piebald and skewbald, white and gingery orange – all milling around amongst the valley trees, stripping whatever foliage they could find. On the outskirts of the camp she passed the flock of sheep, the ewes hobbled, the youngsters left to run free, since they never wandered far from their dams. They looked plump and lively, and there were so many that she could not count them. Now the tents came into view, and beside them were the precious camels – the sturdy Maghrabis and the long-haired Berabish camels, the short grey Adrars and the mehari, the prized white camels from the Tibesti uplands of Chad. The mehari were a great luxury, expensive playthings for rich young men, who rarely used them for what they had been bred for: to travel at speed through the deep desert to raid other tribes or caravans. Instead they just raced them, placing wagers on the outcome. She knew that two of the great white camels, with their haughty heads and skittish ways, belonged to Rhossi.
The Kel Bazgan’s low-lying hide tents looked to be plain and simple dwellings from the outside, but inside the women kept their treasures: bright rugs, soft sheepskins, carved chairs and beds, boxes of silver jewellery, woollen robes, slippers and sandals decorated with studs of brass, gorgeously coloured and fringed leather bags. On the east side of the women’s tents their husbands stored their most precious belongings: swords that had been forged from Toledo steel three centuries before and passed down the generations; tcherots and gris-gris; thick silver armlets and richly adorned saddles. There were boxes of rice, sacks of millet, bags of flour; jars of oil and olives, pots of spices brought from northern markets. The women were plump; the children fat. Even the dogs were well fed. Only the poor were thin. The Bazgan tribe might not enjoy the legendary standing of the Kel Taitok, but it was a wealthy clan nevertheless. As Mariata looked around, it was as if she were seeing it all for the first time; and for the first time she felt ashamed. She had never once given a thought to the polarity between the lives of her people and those of the harratin on whom they depended, having always considered their relative estates the natural order of things. They were the aristocrats and the harratin were their retainers, paid to provide their services. That they were not paid well, or possibly even fairly, had never occurred to her before.
As she sat around the campfire that night with the other women eating spicy mutton with the fragrant flatbread the slaves had made that afternoon, the thought suddenly occurred to her that she had seen no livestock at all in the harratin village. She was quite certain none of them would be eating meat that night, or indeed that month, and the realization made the lamb stick in her throat until she coughed and coughed.
‘Are you unwell, Mariata?’ her Aunt Dassine asked. She was a sharp-eyed woman, sharp-tongued too.
‘I have lost my appetite,’ Mariata replied a little stiffly.
Seated at Dassine’s side, Yallawa stared coldly at Mariata, then turned to her neighbour. ‘The Kel Taitok eat only the most tender of gazelles: clearly our poor sheep are not sufficiently palatable for our regal kinswoman.’
Mariata pushed the rest of her meal away from her. ‘I am not hungry, though I passed many today who were.’
Curious eyes turned to her. ‘Beggars, maybe?’ Dassine asked.
‘Your own harratin,’ Mariata replied shortly. ‘Their children’s bellies are swollen with hunger. Even the adults are thin as sticks.’
People began to murmur. Mariata could catch only a word here or there, but the glances the women gave her were hostile. At last Yallawa said, ‘This is not a subject suitable for discussion by ignorant young women.’ She fixed Mariata with her cold regard. ‘And it is especially unsuitable for a young woman who is dependent on the charity of others for her well-being to voice such foolish and unwanted opinions.’
‘It is not my fault that my mother is dead and that my father treads the salt road. I would hardly have chosen to come here, but I wasn’t given the choice.’
Dassine thrust her face at Mariata. ‘When my brother took your mother to wife, the Kel Taitok treated those of us who travelled all the way to the wedding as if we were vassals bringing them tribute. The women laughed behind their hands at our darker skin and made fun of our best clothes, our jewellery and the way our men wear their veils. You may give yourself airs and boast of your elevated ancestry; but your bloodline does not impress me. You are lucky to be pretty enough to have attracted the eye of Awa’s fine son: at least such a match will temper your arrogance.’
Mariata pushed herself to her feet and without a word walked away, not trusting herself to respond in a civil manner.
She gave the men’s campfire as wide a berth as possible as she made her way to the tents; but even so she saw out of the corner of her eye how Rhossi ag Bahedi detached himself from the group. She increased her pace, but he soon caught her up and stood in front of her, his dark eyes blazing.
‘Walk with me.’
‘I will go nowhere willingly with you.’
‘You should do what I say, if you know what’s good for you.’
‘Since when did any man have the right to tell a woman what to do?’
‘You will regret it if you don’t.’
‘I am sure I would regret it if I did.’
He caught her by the arm. ‘I hope you haven’t said anything to anyone you should not have said.’
‘I can’t imagine what you mean.’
He gave her a little shake. ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’
‘Oh, like telling everyone how you so bravely threw rocks at a defenceless old woman?’
‘Is she dead?’ he asked, a little too avidly.
Mariata regarded him curiously. ‘Why should the high chieftain’s heir care so much about the fate of a poor wandering baggara?’
Rhossi glared at her. ‘A baggara, yes, that’s all she is. But did she live? Tell me at once.’
‘I am happy to report that her death does not lie on your conscience.’
Rhossi let her go and drew back. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ He did not sound sincere. ‘Where is she now?’
Mariata hesitated. ‘She went on her way,’ she said at last, and watched as relief flooded his face. ‘And now I shall be on mine.’ She yawned hugely. ‘Today events have tired me out.’
‘I will see you to your aunt’s tent.’
Mariata laughed. ‘I hardly need a companion to see me safely home over such a short distance.’
‘Even so.’ He took her elbow and walked her away from the campfires. ‘Do not ever mention that woman to anyone, do you hear me?’
‘Who is she, that you’re so concerned that no one knows who she is?’
His jaw tightened. ‘No one special.’
At the entrance to Dassine’s tent, Mariata stopped. ‘Good night, Rhossi.’ Detaching herself from his grasp, she ducked inside. She bent, lit the candle-lantern and knelt to arrange her bed. She had brought the embroidered bedcovering that lay on top of the frame with her: it had come from the south of Morocco and she loved it. Rows of embroidered red camels, unrecognizable to any who did not understand the geometric abstraction, marched across a background of gold; around the edges stylized flowers made star-shapes like the mosaic tilework she had once seen in Tamanrassett. This item, more than any other, reminded her of home. They had left in such haste. ‘Bring only those things you can carry,’ her father had told her brusquely. ‘Your Aunt Dassine will have everything you need and I don’t want the caravan to be held up by having to cart your possessions all over the desert.’
She had left a dozen fine robes, boots for the winter, jewelled sandals and belts, many coloured headscarves and shawls, her sheepskins and the fine goat-leather her mother had been keeping for her so that she could make her own tent when she married. All she had brought with her was contained in the wooden box beside her bed: her jewellery, cosmetics, a little knife and a spare robe. The clothes on her back and this bedcovering represented all she had left in the world – or at least in this place. She ran her hands over the embroidery, feeling homesick and lonely.
‘Very pretty.’
She turned but before she could cry out there was a hand over her mouth. She could smell the stink of mutton-fat on it, and the char of the fire.
‘Who are you going to call for? Your father and brothers are halfway across the Sahara, loading up their camels with cones of salt like the common traders they are. Your aunt? She can’t stand the sight of you. Your cousins, Ana and Nofa? They’ve both been chasing after me for years: not that I’ve any interest in them – the hulking great oxen. All the men live in fear of my uncle, and I am his chosen successor. You’re an outsider in this tribe, Mariata, while I am the heir of its high chief. No one is going to lift a hand to stop me. And afterwards, whose word are people going to believe?’
Rhossi pushed her face down on the bed and held her there, straddling her body, his weight suffocating her. She couldn’t call out, could hardly breathe. The next thing she knew there was cold air on the back of her bare thighs and a hand trying to prise her legs apart, fingernails digging into her delicate flesh. ‘Don’t struggle,’ he told her. ‘You’ll enjoy it: girls always do when they get used to the idea. Just stay still, damn you.’
Her cries of outrage were swallowed by the bedding.
‘You don’t need to worry about the baby: you won’t need to kill it – you’ll be my wife. There’ll be no shame.’
There came a moment when his hold on her lessened and in that moment Mariata felt herself filled by a spirit, a vengeful, ravening thing possessed of supernatural strength. An animal noise came out of her, rough and guttural as she bucked and twisted. Her right arm came free and she shot out a wild elbow that caught Rhossi full in the mouth. Everything stopped.
Mariata fought herself upright, dragging her robe back around her ankles. From her treasure chest beside the bed she took the little dagger and held it out in front of her breathing hard, ready to use it.
Rhossi’s eyes were huge. He touched his face. The hand came away from his mouth covered in blood and he stared at it as if both hand and blood belonged to someone else. When he spat, a tooth fell out on to the beautiful bedcover, spotting it with a different shade of red. He looked at it in disbelief, then transferred his gaze to Mariata. A little whimper escaped him, and then he started to cry. He hurled himself to his feet and ran from the tent.
Mariata stared after him. Then she moved methodically around the tent, collecting the things she would need.
She arrived at the harratin village an hour later.
‘Tell no one that you have seen either Rahma or myself,’ she instructed the headman carefully. ‘And make sure everyone in the village – even the children – say the same thing. They will punish you if they know you have helped us.’
She gave him the rice and flour and tea she had stolen from Dassine’s tent. Then she took Rahma by the arm and led her out to where two of the fine white, fully laden mehari camels that had once belonged to Rhossi ag Bahedi stood waiting complaisantly for them under the light of the three-quarters moon.