Harvest of Rubies (25 page)

Darius slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “My burdens? It’s not a burden to look after you properly. This is my fault. I ought to have looked to your welfare better than I have. I ought to have made sure that the steward was proficient at his work.”

I warmed to him in that moment. He perceived his failure before anyone had to point it out to him, and he took on the responsibility of it without excuse. The simmering anger and blame I had nursed toward him for his careless management of the estate drained out of me. In that one moment I saw him for the man he was; I saw his heart and it was not selfish and undependable as I had assumed. He was the man Bardia claimed him to be.

I swallowed a ball of sorrow, for to have a self-serving man think ill of me didn’t hurt nearly so much as knowing that a truly good man found me wanting. “My lord,” I said, forcing myself to speak. “I fear this is not merely a matter of incompetence. Teispes has been robbing you for three years.”

Darius went still. “That is a serious charge. Do you have proof?”

“We do, my lord.” Bardia nodded. “The mistress, her servant Pari, Shushan, and I, and even Caspian here have banded together to find you proof for over three months. My grandson Gobry joined us in the end, and helped us to find the evidence we needed to bring matters before you. That’s why I’m so glad you have arrived. We have finally managed to solve this mystery ourselves and were about to send for you.”

“I see.” Darius sat down slowly. “You had better present this evidence, then.”

Bardia slipped out to fetch the parchments we had hidden in the kitchen. His absence left an awkward silence. I knelt beside Caspian and scratched his back. He gave me an appreciative
lick, then ambled over to his master and sat at his feet. Darius gave a satisfied smile.

“He’s a good dog,” I said to show that I held no grudge.

“More loyal than some people.” His voice had an edge of bitterness. I couldn’t tell if he was referring to me or to his steward. Both probably.

I remembered that he had just completed a grueling journey and was about to be showered by a lot of unpleasant information. “May I have some refreshments fetched for you?”

He pointed to a water pitcher and bowl. “Is that fresh?”

“Yes, my lord.” I brought them over to him along with a pristine Egyptian towel. He waved my help away and poured the water himself before washing his face and hands. The way he sank his wet fingers through his hair, I could tell he wished for nothing more than a hot bath and a good meal and the comfort of his bed.

“We could speak tomorrow, if you wish,” I offered, feeling guilty for dumping my unpleasant news on him without giving him a chance to draw breath. “Perhaps you should rest after your long journey.”

“You expect me to rest after what I have seen and heard? I’ll not move until I get to the bottom of this mess.”

Bardia returned just then bearing the leather-wrapped parchments. To my relief, he was followed by Pari who bore a large tray of food. Shushan hadn’t had time to prepare an elaborate feast, but she had sent a warm dish of pureed eggplants and onions sautéed in olive oil, turmeric, and dried mint, along with fresh bread and strained yogurt. In her usual efficient manner, Pari set the tray up on a table near Darius. I expected him to wave her away with impatience and begin grilling Bardia and me. But the aroma of Shushan’s cooking proved too tempting and he dipped his bread into the eggplant
and dropped the morsel into his mouth before Pari had a chance to hand him a napkin.

A deep sigh escaped his lips and he closed his eyes as he chewed. “No one cooks like Shushan, not even the royal cooks at Susa or Persepolis.”

I was glad to see him eat. For one thing, I was still feeling guilty for depriving him of any form of respite with my ill-timed revelations. For another, I knew he would be in a better mood with the taste of Shushan’s food on his tongue.

As if sensing my thoughts, he opened his eyes and gestured with his hand. “Please. Proceed.”

With painstaking detail, I laid before him the tale of our investigations. I explained how I had grown suspicious of Teispes, and how he refused to allow me into the records room. I tried to gloss over the way we took Teispes’s key by merely saying that we stole it from him.

“Wait a moment,” Darius said, halting my rapid narrative. “How did you do that? As I recall, he never removes the thing from around his neck. Or is that not true?”

“Oh, it’s true,” Bardia said.

I squirmed uncomfortably on the couch. I now had to tell my husband how I sneaked into the chamber of a man alone, and how I laid hands on him as he slept in his bed. Darius listened to my tale of indiscretion and theft with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

“My wife, it turns out, has greater talent than I was led to believe. Remind me to take you on our next military campaign. You can sneak into the enemy general’s tent at night and get me whatever information I need. And if perchance he should wake before you are finished, tell him he can keep you with my compliments.”

To my shock, Bardia, usually so respectful, shushed him.
“He does not mean it, mistress. When he knows the full story, he will ask your pardon, I am sure.”

“He will not,
I
am sure,” Darius said, grabbing another piece of bread loaded with yogurt and eggplant.

Before we lost the thread of our conversation altogether, I picked up where I had left off and told of Caspian’s part in the plot. Darius roared with laughter, a sound I had never heard. I could grow accustomed to it, I decided.

“Clever beast. He saved the lot of you.”

“He did,” I admitted, “though he paid a price for it, poor fellow.” I described how I had found Teispes beating him. Darius turned pale. I could see it took all his control to keep from jumping up there and then to fetch Teispes and give him a taste of his own medicine.

I gazed at the dog who had saved me with such courage that night; he seemed strangely subdued and sleepy given that his beloved master was nearby after such a long absence. I reached over to pat his head. Darius must have had the same thought, for our hands connected in a brief caress over Caspian’s bristly fur. I pulled my arm back quickly and hid it in the folds of my skirt. I didn’t dare look up at Darius; I didn’t want to see his sarcastic expression. I wondered if he assumed I had purposely reached out my hand for an excuse to touch him.

He refrained from making one of his cutting remarks. “What happened after?” was all he said, and even that sounded bored.

So I told him about my discovery of the discrepancies in the accounts and showed him the ledgers that had caught my notice. I had to kneel close by his stool to explain the figures. The flowing pleats of my sleeve brushed his thigh every time I pointed out something on the parchment. Without warning, he grabbed the silk and moved it off his lap and stood up
so abruptly that I lost my balance. With a thud I ended up sitting on my rump.

He rolled the parchment and threw it on a table. “Fine. I can see there is unusual activity. It does not prove he is a thief, however, though he certainly needs to explain himself. Do you have more?”

“We do.”

Before I could divulge the secrets of Teispes’s pastime on Mondays, Bardia told him about the loose flagstone on the garden steps.

“You think he intentionally tried to hurt my wife? That’s beyond belief, Bardia. The man would have to be mad.”

“Or very brazen. My grandson is the one who discovered the stone. He told us it was pulled out by someone on purpose.”

Darius sank back on the stool. “Gobry would know. He’s had ample training. I can scarcely believe this. But why?”

“He must have discovered the missing parchments,” I said. “He was warning us to leave him be.” I had moved back to the couch, a safe distance away from my husband. “Anyway, Gobry agreed to do a bit of spying for us in Ecbatana. We had assumed that Mandana’s twins belonged to Teispes. But it turned out we were wrong.”

I described Gobry’s findings and Bardia filled in the details of our spying trip into Persepolis. Thankfully, he omitted to tell my husband about my short career as a courtesan.

Darius was silent for a long time. I could see that he was trying to digest the ramifications of our revelations. The profound betrayal. The cost of it to people he loved. The damage of it to his estate. And the fact that his own carelessness had allowed Teispes’s duplicity to go on for three interminable years.

At his feet, Caspian tried to rise, then fell. He did this several
times. At first I thought he was drunk from the wine, until I noticed his unnaturally fast breathing. He seemed to have trouble drawing air into his lungs. All of us rushed to his side.

“What’s the matter, boy? What’s wrong with you?” I cried.

Suddenly the hound began to quake in great jerking motions, his massive body shuddering with uncontrollable movement.

“He’s having a seizure,” Darius said. “Has this happened before?”

“Never! What should we do? Can you not help him?” I began to tremble, looking at the poor creature’s suffering.

Darius shook his head. After a few moments, the shaking seemed to stop. A large glob of spittle came out of his mouth. He shook twice more before losing consciousness. Darius went rigid. He bent his head and sniffed the dog’s mouth. “Bitter almonds,” he said and turned to look at Bardia. Something passed between them in that look, something I didn’t like.

“What does it mean?” I asked, horror sinking me to the ground.

“Tell me, Sarah, what has he eaten today?”

“He ate what I ate at dinner.”

“What
you
ate?” Again I saw that indefinable secret pass between the two men. They turned to gaze at me. Darius’s green eyes were intense and unflinching. “Did he eat anything else?”

I remembered the spilled wine. “He drank of the wine Teispes brought me earlier, remember? And the dates too.”

Darius rushed over to the almost empty goblet and began to sniff it. “Bitter almonds,” he said again, cryptically.

I put Caspian’s head on my lap and began to stroke his now inert body. “But what does it mean? Why is he so sick?”

Darius crouched in front of me. “Sarah.” I was too miserable to pay him any mind. He tangled his hand in my hair and forced my head up until I focused on him. “Did you drink of the wine, Sarah?”

“Why?”

“Because it was poisoned.”

“P
oisoned?
” I remembered Teispes knocking on my do or, and delivering the tray with a pleasant smile. “Of course. It was Teispes.” I felt completely paralyzed as I beheld Caspian’s unconscious form, his belly rising and falling with fast, shallow breaths.

“Did you drink any of it?” Darius asked again, and now I understood the intensity of his manner.

“No. No, I didn’t.”

Darius let out a breath and let me go. “Does he always deliver your food personally?”

“No. This was the first time. He said he wanted to ask my pardon, and that he was sorry he had followed your orders to treat me with contempt.”

“I gave no such order.”

I shrugged. “He said he came to make peace. His mistake was that he brought me a copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh from your library. I became too engrossed in the story to touch the
food or the wine. I would have drunk it soon enough, but then you came. And Caspian got to it first.”

Darius became a whirl of motion. “Bardia,” he said, his voice calm, but commanding, “do you have a purge we can give him? It’s probably too late already, but we should try.”

“I don’t know how it would work on a dog, master. It might just send him over the edge.”

“It’s a chance we must take. He’ll die anyway, if we do nothing.”

I couldn’t hold back a cry at that news. I laid my head against Caspian’s and wept. Bardia said quietly, “I’ll fetch the herbs right away.”

Darius rushed to the door. One of his men stood at attention outside my chamber. I overheard enough of his command to know that he had sent the man to arrest Teispes.

When he returned, he knelt by Caspian. Gently, he began to rub the dog on its chest. “Do you think he is suffering?” I asked.

“Not anymore. He is in a deep sleep.”

I nodded. I had begun shivering and I couldn’t stop. Darius’s hands on my shoulders made me jump. I realized that he was wrapping me in my cloak. He must have risen with the silence of a cat, for I never noticed his movements. He came back to crouch before me.

“You’ve grown to love him?”

I nodded. He had been my champion through danger and my companion through many lonely hours.

Darius pulled the cloak closer about me and settled the fabric around me until I was covered from neck to feet. “Thank you,” I whispered. He rose to fetch a blanket with which he covered Caspian.

“He is the brightest dog I ever had,” he said. “And the most faithful.”