Joan Wolf (5 page)

He put his hand on the marble rim of the fountain and Julianne found herself noticing how beautiful it was: long and finely shaped and strong. Her nerve ends were acutely aware of him, so close beside her in the moonlight. She felt strange, unsettled, and to hide her agitation she said, “It seems a lot of fuss about very little. What harm can there be in venerating the memory of a holy man?”

“Well, it is a practice that can get a little out of hand.” There was laughter in his voice and in the corners of his mouth. “There is a story told of a village in South Arabia whose inhabitants were so wicked that they never produced a saint. Consequently, they had no tomb to venerate. In order to rectify the problem they invited a well-known holy man to visit them. They feasted him well, then, as he slept, they murdered him. Next day they built him an especially fine tomb, which became the object of envy among their neighbors.”

She stared at his profile. “Are you serious?”

“That is the story.”

She started to laugh. “I suppose I should say ‘how terrible,’ but it is awfully funny.”

He grinned and flicked her cheek with a careless finger. “You are going to be wasted in England, Julianne. A true Englishwoman would have been horrified.”

She sobered immediately. “I am out of practice at being a ‘true Englishwoman,’ but I mean to do my best to learn.” She stepped a little away from him, uneasy at her reaction to that casual caress.

“You won’t succeed,” he said positively.

“Why not?”

“To be truly English is to be dull, boring, and hypocritical. I don’t think you could be any of those things.”

“I hope not, but I don’t agree with your definition. To be English is to be calm and sane and secure and reasonable.”

There was a mocking look on his dark face. “Is that what you want? To be calm and sane and secure and reasonable?”

“Yes,” she said decidedly.

He reached out, put his hand on the thick blond braid that fell to her waist, and pulled it until her head tipped back. “Your eyes remind me of lake water,” he murmured, “cool, shining, unfathomable. Not reasonable at all.” His other hand came up to caress the smooth skin of her throat. He bent his head toward her. She watched the slow, unhurried descent of his mouth with dilated eyes, caught between the hand on her hair and the one on her throat. As his mouth touched hers she stiffened in protest and tried to pull away. The hand that was on her neck moved to her back, pulling her hard against him.

No one within Julianne’s memory had ever kissed her on the mouth. The initial shock of it was reflected in the rigidity of her body and the way her head strained back against his hand. But after a moment, as his kiss deepened and he refused to let her go, shock began to give way to something else. Her body melted into pliancy and her mouth softened under the hardness of his. She closed her eyes.

When he released her she almost lost her balance and put her hands on his chest to steady herself. The thudding of his heart under the thin cotton of his shirt startled her. She looked up at him, confused by the tumult of her own feelings. “You will be wasted in England,” he repeated. Then, putting her away from him gently: “I think you had better go inside before I am tempted to do that again.” Without a word she turned and went into the house.

Chapter Six

This country swarms with vile outrageous men...

—Christopher Marlowe

Julianne was bewildered and aghast by her reaction to John Champernoun’s kiss. She could not understand why she had ceased to resist him. She was horribly afraid that she might even have kissed him back!

Consequently, she was stiff and embarrassed the next time they met. He, on the contrary, was cool and brisk and efficient. No one would have been able to tell from his demeanor that last time they were together he had held her in his arms. She found that instead of being grateful for his apparent unconcern, she was annoyed. Then she was annoyed with herself for being annoyed. Really, she thought, as she listened to his incisive voice detailing the way he was planning to deal with her, he was a very irritating man.

“I am going to send you to Alexandria with Said,” he told her. “Mme. Rioux is still there and her husband is certain she will not object to undertaking a journey to England. You will leave in three days. Said must be here for the pasha’s festival tomorrow.”

He seemed suddenly quite anxious to be rid of her, but Julianne did not object. “Very well,” she said quietly. She was confident that this Mme. Rioux would do as John requested. He was not the sort of man one refused very easily.

“What is this festival about?” she asked as he seemed on the point of turning and leaving.

He swung around a little to face her again. “The pasha’s son, Ibrahim, is being invested with the Pelisse of Honor for his part in the retaking of the holy cities. The kislar aga is here from the Porte in order to perform the ceremony. All of the Mameluke lords will be there as well. After the investiture there is to be a great procession from the citadel through the city. Said is to be at the ceremony, along with myself.”

“I understood that
you
were the one who engineered the retaking of the holy cities,” she said on a note of inquiry.

“The leader of the army was Ibrahim,” he replied, his voice without expression. “The victories are his. I should ignore any comments you may hear to the contrary.”

“I see. And you have been well rewarded for your part already.”

His teeth flashed in acknowledgment. “I have been well rewarded.”

Julianne said wistfully, “I should love to see the procession. If the Mamelukes are taking part it is bound to be splendid.”

His black brows snapped together. “You stay away from Cairo tomorrow,” he ordered. “I don’t want you to leave this house. Is that understood?”

Julianne was a little white around the nostrils. There was an uncomfortable pause, then she said crisply, “To hear is to obey, my lord.”

He looked at her assessingly and she stared steadily back. “You had better,” he said grimly. “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes if I find out you haven’t.”

Julianne did not disobey. Part of her wanted to, and not just because she would have enjoyed seeing the procession. It was that she was sick and tired of being ordered around. All of her life she had been bullied by an authoritarian male. In many ways Lord Richard had been worse than the Arab slavers to whom she had been sold. Her instinct, when John spoke to her in that voice of grim command, was to rebel.

As a child she had loved her father and had exerted herself to please him. He had not been a neglectful parent and had spent long hours with his only daughter. He taught her Arabic. He drilled her in the Scriptures. She learned a great deal about medicine and injuries from him.  He allowed her little liberty for her own pursuits; from the time she was seven her day had been strictly laid out for her.

Julianne had wanted very much to please him. When he said, “go,” she went; “come,” she came; “do this,” she did it. He was not an easy master. She felt every failure on her part was a personal wound to him, deeply engraved and permanent.

When he had determined to go to Africa, it had not occurred to her that she would not accompany him. It was what he had been training her for during all those years of study. Both she and her mother were his willing satellites, securely under the domination of his formidable, austere, commanding character. When her grandmother had begged to keep Julianne, Lord Richard had said in his measured tones: “Julianne is diligent, faithful, and courageous.  Her assistance to me in Africa will be invaluable. There is no question of her staying behind.”

Julianne had been fourteen and proud of his high opinion of her. When finally they reached Africa she strained to satisfy him until she ached with the effort.

It was only gradually that she became aware that physically her mother was incapable of the task her husband had set for her. She was not strong, but Lord Richard urged her to impossibilities. There was no slowing of their pace, no permission to rest during the hot hours. Julianne protested, but her mother exerted herself to do all that he asked of her. She died less than a year after they reached Africa.

After the death of her mother Julianne began to see her father with new eyes. She loved the vast silent beauty of Africa, but he did not wish her to waste her time with such trivialities as the observation of nature. She still wished to please him but to do so she felt daily more and more that she must disown half her nature, stifle half her faculties.

Julianne was growing out of childhood. Her father, once the god of her existence, became more and more in her eyes a cold and unbending tyrant. She turned from him into herself, into the spontaneity of her response to the glory of Africa, into her own natural and unenslaved feelings. She began to keep a diary.

Lord Richard responded first with verbal disapproval and then with iron silence. He felt all the anger that a despotic nature knows when it meets with resistance where it expected submission.  It was only when she stood up against her father that Julianne realized the measure of the man. Without one evident act of hostility, one angry word, he managed to impress her constantly with the conviction that she had gone beyond the pale of his favor. There could be no compromise. He would settle for nothing but total capitulation. After a while Julianne gave up trying to heal their estrangement. From absolute submission he drove her to determined revolt.

She could not leave him, but they were irrevocably alienated. Julianne turned more and more into herself, into the solace of her writing, into the resources within herself she had not known she possessed. And she determined that never again would she allow herself to come under the domination of a hard, implacable, pitiless man such as her father.

So when John Champernoun spoke to her with such imperious authority, Julianne’s impulse was childishly to defy him. But she was not a child anymore and had long since ceased to act on unreflecting impulse. John had told her he was concerned for her reputation, and she could appreciate that concern. He was undertaking the trouble and the expense of seeing she was returned to England in safety. She owed him a great deal. If he had not been at that sale.... her mind tended to shy away from that dreadful possibility. He had saved her life, she felt, and the least she could do was to obey his wishes. So she did. But it irked her all the same.

Late the following afternoon, the day of the ceremony at the citadel, Julianne was reading in the shade of the courtyard when she heard the sound of a commotion outside the house. There was the sound of shouting and the clatter of horses’ hooves and she looked up, surprised. Usually the road was very quiet. After a few minutes the noise faded away, and she went back to her book.

She was reading a well-worn copy of Shakespeare, which she had borrowed from John’s surprisingly extensive book collection. Most of the volumes looked well read, and some, such as the Shakespeare, were definitely travel-stained. The books were about the only possession he owned that seemed personal.

Julianne was blissfully devouring as much as she could of his library. Her father’s idea of suitable reading material had been confined to the
Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress,
and Foxe’s Book
of Martyrs.
John had books on history, travel, and—surprising to her—a great deal of poetry. Julianne went through the Elizabethan poets with relish, gobbled up the blood-and-passion plays of Marlowe, Webster, and Tourneur, and then she found Shakespeare. The book hadn’t been with the others when she first started to read, and she thought that John must have had it and put it back when he realized what she was doing. Reading Shakespeare was like opening a door on a marvelous new world, and consequently she paid little attention to the unusual disturbance and went happily back to
Othello.

Half an hour later there was another disturbance and this time Said came rushing into the courtyard. “You must come inside, lady,” he said urgently. “John said you must go upstairs to your room and keep out of sight. There may be danger.”

“What has happened?” Julianne asked, rising to do as he requested.

“There has been an incident at the citadel. Mohammed Ali ordered the massacre of all the Mamelukes. Even now the soldiers are searching the city for any survivors. They will certainly come out to Ezbekhiah. John thinks this house will be safe, but he wants you to remain hidden. I have a guard of men stationed outside. Please do not worry.”

“Dear God!” Julianne was hurrying along beside him as he spoke. “Is John all right?” she asked as they reached her room.

“Of course. He is waiting to see the pasha and then he will return here. Please do not be afraid.”

“No, I won’t be afraid. Go now, Said. I promise I will stay right here.” He looked at her, a tinge of admiration in his dark eyes, and then he went.

All through the long hours that followed, Julianne was aware of the soldiers on the road outside the house. It was not until the dawn was beginning to break that a tap came on the door of her room. She had not been to bed, had not even changed her clothes. “Come in,” she said instantly. The door opened and it was John.

Her initial feeling was a rush of wild relief. “Thank God you are all right!” she said. “I have been so worried. What happened?”

He came into the room and for the first time she caught a glimpse of his face. The look in his eyes frightened her, as did the grim set of his mouth. With an odd sensation of shock she realized he was very angry. When he spoke there was a cold stillness in his voice that made her shiver a little. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I have been in this room since Said returned this afternoon. The road has been busy but no one has come into the house.”

“They had better not have.”

Julianne stared at him; he looked like a stranger. Then she said softly, “John, please. What happened? I don’t know.”

It seemed as if he saw her for the first time. “Didn’t Said tell you?”