The great doorway was open, and lamps had been lit all the way through the interior. It was a festival for women today, to prepare for the wedding of Aisha ult Hamid to her cousin Agwilal. From inside, she could hear the sound of ululation. The bride-to-be would be in the holiest place.
The slave made a way for her through the press of women and children. Her husband was an important man in the oasis, and other women deferred to her. When she walked among them, she feared the evil eye. She had gone only a few yards inside when the ululation came to an end. In the silence, she heard the sound again, like the buzzing of flies, somewhere in the desert. Was something evil on its way? she wondered.
It was about an hour before sunset when Aehrenthal and his gang finally arrived at Ain Suleiman. All was quiet, but somewhere beyond the trees a woman was singing. She sang a lilting song, then more women joined in.
‘They’re preparing for a wedding,’ said Mohamed. ‘In a moment the drums will begin. For now, this is for the women.’
The light changed from pearl to pink to red. In the sky the first stars quivered. The moon had not yet risen, and as the sun sank lower it carried the world with it into darkness. In the oasis oil lamps flickered like stars of a different universe.
The singing continued for a little while, then one by one the voices stopped until the women had all stopped singing, and all their silences came down and filled the chambers of Wardabaha.
Outside, the moon had risen, shedding a white light across the blue water of the great pool. It tipped the leaves of the palms with silver.
As the soldiers of the Legion of Longinus walked down the slope that would bring them to the edge of Ain Suleiman, they saw dark shapes gather ahead of them. The men of the oasis had heard the jeeps arrive, and one old man, who had been a child on that wartime day, had told his son, ‘They’ve come back.’
The men of the Kel Ajjer waited in a line, watching the newcomers. Mohamed ag Ewangaye walked ahead, all but his eyes wrapped in blue and black cloth. When he reached the tribesmen, he stepped up to a man in a high headdress, whom he knew to be the chief Imashaghen.
‘Al-salam ‘alaykum,’ he said in greeting. ‘Oy ik.’
The chief mumbled a reply.
‘Alkher ghas.’
‘Mani eghiwan?’
The same reply.
‘Mani echeghel?’
The same reply. Mohamed turned to Aehrenthal.
‘I have enquired about himself and his family, and I have asked about his work. All are well.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Now, tell him we’ve come to see the holy city.’
The chief, a man called Idris agg Yusuf agg Yaqub Iskakkghan, looked at Mohamed, then at Aehrenthal. The moonlight etched Aehrenthal’s face. One glance at it and Idris knew all he needed to know.
‘Are you British?’ he asked. ‘English?’
Aehrenthal hesitated. What did this man of the desert know of England? He was much too young to have met any of the Usherwood expedition.
‘If you are British, you are very welcome. It was British soldiers who came here when my grandfather Yaqub was still a little child. He was dying of the jaw sickness and they saved him. There was a doctor. Do you know if he is still alive?’
Aehrenthal nodded and, speaking through Mohamed, answered that his father had known the doctor.
The moonlight reflected off Idris’s smile. Then he spoke again.
‘You cannot go into the city tonight. There is a wedding tomorrow. The women are there tonight.’
Aehrenthal said nothing. He knew Usherwood and his friends were behind him somewhere, and he knew he needed time to go through the chambers with Sarah Usherwood, if she would cooperate. But, then, he thought he had the perfect means of persuading her to do that.
Instead, he asked for food, and an hour later he and his men had sat down to a meal cooked by the servant girls. They ate while the singing recommenced. The Tuareg watched them with sharp eyes, intrigued by the little implements they called ‘spoons’, which had come from their vehicles. They did not join their guests. The Anislem, a descendant of the priest who had harboured murderous thoughts towards Gerald Usherwood and his men, busied himself by writing talismans made up of six-pointed stars inscribed with fine Tifinagh letters as old as the rocks.
They ate outside, squatting on the ground around a fire. The fire had been lit out of respect for the visitors. It would not last long: wood was a scarce commodity in the desert. Above them, the stars formed a net of light.
Aehrenthal put his spoon down. The goat had been stringy, the stew thin, the wine just water from Solomon’s spring. His men had started to complain about the repast, some volubly. There was a sense of violence in the air. He was growing impatient. He knew someone had followed him here, and Sarah Usherwood’s presence told him who it was. He wanted out of Ain Suleiman before Usherwood got here with reinforcements. It was dark, and it would be darker still inside the city, but his expedition had come well equipped with torches and lamps that could be powered from the engine of a jeep.
He stood up and went to where Idris agg Yusuf and his fellows were seated. The chief had dropped the lower half of his veil to eat, revealing a narrow chin and straggly moustache. He looked old, but Aehrenthal guessed he might be no more than thirty. Life in the desert was incredibly hard, Mohamed had told him, and no one lived very long except the Anislem, who led a more sheltered life than the rest.
Aehrenthal spoke to Mohamed.
‘Tell him we are grateful for his food. But our time here is short. We came here to see the city of Wardabaha, and my men are growing impatient. We want him to take us there tonight.’
A brief exchange followed. Mohamed turned to Aehrenthal.
‘He says that, with respect, he cannot tell the women to stop their celebrations. He asks you to have patience. Nothing will leave, nothing will change. Wait till morning. The women will leave in the morning.’
Something snapped in Aehrenthal. He had waited so many years for this, for something to come to the point of revelation, of contact. He had at last set foot in a place he had long thought legend or a mirage. He was come like a wise man from the east, a barbarian in awe of a dead king. But the only gifts he bore were death and fear.
He got to his feet and stalked across the circle of diners until he was in front of the chief.
‘I asked you to take us to the city. I didn’t expect you to fuck me around like this.’
Idris looked at him in puzzlement.
‘Tell him!’ bellowed Aehrenthal. All around him, the Tuareg were growing agitated. No one was eating. The slave girls scampered away, sensing trouble in the offing.
Mohamed told the chief in polite language, but he knew he was already on unsteady ground, that the insult had already been mouthed. He noticed that Idris was already surrounded by a bodyguard of Imashaghen and that they had raised the agedellehouf, the lower half of their veils, over their noses and mouths to signify both the end of the meal and the end of hospitality. To break off hospitality was a signal for guests to depart, since it might be understood as a token of war. The last time someone had insulted one of the Kel Ajjer had been in Ghadames fifty years earlier. No sooner had the offending words been uttered than the Kel Ajjer had used his sword to cut the other man’s windpipe. He had drawn aside so swiftly, not a drop of blood touched his clothes.
Some of the younger men let slip their swords. There was a glimmer of hardened steel, a quivering of light. Their elders told them to put the swords back in their sheaths, but the young men, who felt they had the impetuousness of youth on their side, would not comply. They stood firm against the insult that had been offered their leader and, through him, the Imashaghen altogether.