The Gabriel Hounds (13 page)

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Well, if he has time to spare, tell him to leave it for a few days, will you, at least till after mid-week. I’ll do what I can, and get in touch with you at the Phoenicia.’

It seemed there wasn’t much else I could do except trust to his good offices.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell him. When she’s had time to think it over, I’m sure she’ll change her mind.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said John Lethman, rather shortly.

Thy promises are like Adonis’ gardens,

That one day bloom’d and fruitful were the next.

Shakespeare:
I Henry VI

I
N
the night it rained.

I had got back to my room at some time between half past one and two in the morning. The night had been dry then, very black and perfectly still, with nothing to suggest a storm to follow. Mr. Lethman saw me as far as my bedroom door, where I had left the oil lamp lit, said good night, and withdrew. I carried my lamp along to the hammam, washed as well as I could in a trickle of cold water, and then went back to my room again. There was no key, but I saw a heavy wooden bar on the inside of the door. I dropped this carefully into its sockets. Then I took off my outer clothing, turned my lamp down rather inexpertly and blew out the wicks, and climbed into bed.

Even though the hour was late, and I was tired, I lay awake for some little time turning the recent scene over and over in my head. I imagined myself telling Charles, telling my mother and father, and somehow none of
the words seemed to fit or be right. ‘She seemed odd, she seemed ill, she’s getting old, she’s going to town a bit on this recluse thing—’ none of these phrases seemed to fit the decidedly off-beat tone of the interview. And if she really was going to refuse to see Charles …

Well, that was Charles’s problem, not mine. I slept.

I’m not sure whether it was the flash of lightning or the almost simultaneous crack of thunder that woke me, but as I stirred in bed and opened my eyes the sound of rain seemed to obliterate all else. I have never heard such rain. There was no wind with it, only the cracking of thunder and the vivid white rents in the black sky. I sat up in bed to watch. The window-arches flickered dramatically against the storm outside, and the portcullis squares of the grille stamped themselves on the room over and over again with their violently angled perspectives of black and white. Through the window that I had opened the scents of flowers came almost storming in, vividly wakened by the rain. With the scents came, more palpably, a good deal of the rain itself, hitting the sill and splashing on the floor in great hammering drops.

Reluctantly, I got out of bed and padded in my bare feet across the chilly floor to shut the casement. Even while I groped in momentary darkness for the catch, my arm was soaked almost to the shoulder by the slashing downpour. I slammed the casement shut, and while I fought to fix the stiff and squeaking catch I heard, from the direction of the main gate, the sudden keening howl of a big dog.

It is one of the weirdest of all sounds, bringing with
it, I suppose, race memories of wolves and jackals and such, overlaid by countless legends of death and grief. The first hound’s voice rose in a throbbing wail, to be joined by the long tremolo of the other. The watchdogs, of course, upset by the storm; but I felt my hand instinctively clench stiff on the soaked iron of the window-catch, while I listened with cold prickles running over my skin. Then I jammed the thing shut and reached for my towel to rub my arm dry.

No wonder a howling dog was supposed to foretell a death … As I scrubbed at my wet arm and shoulder I thought of the legend Charles had reminded me of, ‘gabble ratchet’, the Gabriel Hounds, Death’s pack hunting through the sky … Certainly all hell seemed to be loose up there tonight, full cry. In the old days anyone in the palace might well have believed the hounds of the storm to be crying death.

In the old days. And you’d have been superstitious then, and believed in that kind of thing. Whereas now … oh, nonsense, there was nothing wrong …

I flung the towel down and padded back to bed.

About five seconds later I discovered something a good deal more disturbing than any Gabriel Hounds. The roof was leaking. Moreover, it was leaking in the corner right above my bed.

I discovered this – it being dark, in the simplest possible way, by getting back into bed straight into the middle of a soaking patch, and by receiving at the same moment a large gout of water squarely on the back of my neck. It was followed almost immediately by another, and another …

I hurled myself back on to the cold marble, and started a frantic hunt for my shoes. Perversely, the lightning had stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun, and it was now quite dark. I found one shoe eventually, and stumbled about looking for the other, but couldn’t find it. I would have to light the lamp. This, of course, meant finding my handbag, and the matches I hoped I was carrying – and by the time I had done this another pint of so of water would have emptied itself into my bed. I suppose it would have been sensible to drag the bed straight away from the danger point before starting the hunt for my effects, but from what I had seen of the palace appointments, I wasn’t prepared to manhandle any of their furniture about the floors in the dark. So I hopped about, blasphemously groping, until I had found my matches, and then it took me another five minutes or so to manage the lighting of the oil lamp.

Once the room was lit it was the work of moments to find my other shoe and throw something on over my near-nakedness. Then I recklessly dragged the bed away from the wall. It came across the cracked marble with a dot-and-carry-one screech of broken castors. With it out of the way, the water dripped steadily on to the floor. It was only after some moments that I realized how loud the dripping was. The rain had stopped.

I went back to the window. As suddenly as if a tap had been turned off the rain had ceased. Already I could see stars. I pulled open the casement to find that in the wake of the storm had come a small erratic
breeze, which was clearing the clouds and whispering among the trees of the gorge. After the chill of the soaking storm the breeze was warm, so I left the casement wide. Then I turned back to deal with my problem.

Most of the bedcovers were still dry, having been pushed back out of the way when I got out of bed myself. I heaved these off the bed, put them gingerly on the dry part of the window-seat, then, more gingerly still, turned the mattress. It was of thick horse-hair, with a fresh cover of unbleached cotton, and I could only hope that it would last me the rest of the night before the wet soaked up through it. I discarded the sodden sheet, piled the dry bedcovers back on, put out the lamp and lay down, clothes and all, to pass what remained of the night.

But not yet in sleep. The steady dripping just beside me on the marble floor seemed as loud as a drum beat. I stood it for perhaps ten minutes, then realised I would get no sleep until I stopped it. So once more I rolled out of bed, groped for and found the crumpled and soaking sheet, and put it down under the drips. In the blessed quiet that followed, another sound from outside caught my ear, and I straightened up and stood listening.

No hounds of Death now; they were quiet. This was a bird singing in the garden, full and loud and echoing from the water and the enclosing walls. Another joined it. And then a third, waterfalls of song rinsing the clear air.

I unbarred the door and padded out across the arcade.

The surface of the lake was faintly shining, lighter than the dim starlight it reflected. Spatters of rain shook intermittently from the bushes as the breeze wandered. The nightingales’ song filled the garden, welling out of the tangle of soaked and glittering creepers.

A pair of white pigeons rocketed out from their roost in the western arcade and vanished with a clap of wings over my head. Something – someone – moved in the darkness beneath the arches. A man, walking along under the arcade. He was moving very softly, and above the noise of the birds and the rustle of the leaves I couldn’t hear him, but this was no white-robed Arab. It must be John Lethman. Probably he’d come along to see how I’d made out in the storm.

I waited a few moments longer, but he didn’t come, and I saw nothing more. The garden, but for the song of the nightingales, was quiet and still.

I shivered suddenly. Five minutes’
Nachtmusik
was more than enough. I padded back into my room, crossly shut my door against the nightingales, and rolled back on to the bed.

I woke to blazing sunlight and a tapping on the door.

It was Halide with my breakfast, a plate of thin unleavened bread, some cream cheese, the inevitable apricot jam, and a big pot of coffee. The girl looked tired, and still eyed me sideways with that sulky glance, but made no comment on the disorder of the room, the sodden sheet on the floor, or even the bed shifted four feet out from the wall. When I thanked her for the tray
and said something about the wild night, she only nodded sullenly and went out.

But everything else was cheerful this morning, even the hammam, with sunlight pouring down through the blue and amber glass bells in the ceiling, and lighting the alabaster basins and pale marble walls in a swimming subaqueous light. The water trickled – colder than ever – out of a dolphin’s mouth into a silver shell. I rinsed my face and hands, went back to my room and dressed, then carried the tray out into the blazing sunshine at the edge of the pool.

The golden heat, the high blue sky, made it difficult to remember last night’s storm of pouring rain, but here and there on the path where the flagstones had sunk, or in the wells dug round the tree-roots to catch the rain, the water still stood glittering, inches deep. The weeds between the stones looked already half as long again, the flowers brighter, the bushes glossy and refreshed. Even the water of the pool looked clearer, and beside it a peacock stood studying his reflection, with his tail fully spread, looking entirely artificial, like something from a picture-book, or a jewelled bird by Fabergé. Some other bird, small and golden, flirted over a rose laurel. The little kiosk on the island, freshly washed, showed a gilded dome and a glimpse of bright blue tiling. One of the nightingales was doing overtime in the roses.

I wondered how John Lethman had got in and out last night, and why.

He came some half hour later. Whatever excursions he had undertaken during the night, they didn’t seem
to have affected him. He looked alert and wide awake, the blurred look gone from his eyes, which were clear grey, and very bright. He moved with energetic precision, and greeted me almost gaily.

‘Good morning.’

‘Oh, hullo. Nice timing.’ I emerged from my door with my luggage – a handbag – packed and ready. ‘I was just coming to look for you and hoping the dogs had been shut up.’

‘Always by day. Did they wake you last night? It was a bit rough, I’m afraid. Did you sleep through it?’ Here his eyes went past me to the disorder of the room. ‘I say, rough was the right word, wasn’t it? What happened? Don’t tell me – the roof leaked?’

‘It certainly did.’ I laughed. ‘Did you decide to rate me third class after all? No, I’m only joking, I shifted the bed and managed quite a bit of sleep in the end. But I’m afraid you’ll find the mattress pretty wet.’

‘That doesn’t matter, it’ll dry in five minutes once it’s put outside. I’m terribly sorry, the roof gutter must be blocked again. Nasirulla swore he’d cleaned it. Did you really sleep?’

‘Fine, thanks, in the end. Don’t worry, just think it’s an ill wind that blows no good.’

‘Meaning?’

‘If I hadn’t come turning the household upside down, you’d have been the one under the water-spout.’

‘You’ve got something there. But believe me, you’re no ill wind. Your aunt was quite set up last night after your visit.’

‘Was she really? I didn’t tire her?’

‘Not a bit. She kept me talking quite a time after you’d gone.’

‘No change about Charles, I suppose?’

‘Not yet, I’m afraid, but give her time. You’re ready, are you? Shall we go?’ We moved towards the gate.

‘Did she keep you very late?’ I asked. ‘It seems hard, the way you burn the torch at both ends.’

‘Not very, no. I’d gone to bed before the storm broke.’

‘It woke you, I suppose?’

‘Not a flicker.’ He laughed. ‘And don’t think I’m neglecting my duty, will you? Your great-aunt thrives on disturbances like last night’s. She tells me she enjoyed it. She’d have made a wonderful Katisha.’

‘“
But to him who’s scientific There’s nothing that’s terrific In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts
”?’ I quoted, and heard him laugh again, softly, to himself. ‘Well, she’s got a point, I rather enjoyed it myself. At least, I enjoyed the aftermath. The garden looked wonderful.’

I caught a quick sideways glance. ‘You went out?’

‘Only for a moment; I went out to listen to the nightingales. Oh, look at the flowers! Is that because of the storm? More good from the ill wind, would you say?’

We were crossing the small courtyard where Hamid and I had waited yesterday. Here, too, the rain had washed the place clean, and the marble pillars dazzled white in the sun. At their feet the carved troughs were a blaze of red anemones, wide open and shiny as fresh blood in the long grass.

‘My Adonis Gardens,’ said Mr Lethman.

‘Your what?’

‘Adonis Gardens. I suppose you know the Adonis myth?’

‘I know Aphrodite met him in the Lebanon and he died there, and that every spring his blood stains the river and it runs red to the sea. What is it, iron in the water?’

‘Yes. It’s one of the spring resurrection stories, like Persephone, or the Osiris myth. Adonis was a corn-god, a fertility god, and he dies to rise again. The “Adonis Gardens” are – you might call them little personal symbols of death and resurrection; and they’re sympathetic magic as well, because the people who planted them and forced the seeds and flowers to grow as quickly as they could, thought they were helping the year’s harvest. The flowers and herbs sprang up and withered and died all in a few days, and then the “gardens” with the images of the god were taken, with the women wailing and mad with grief, down to the sea and thrown in. See? It was all mixed up, here, with the Dionysiac cult, and Osiris, and the rites of Attis, and it still persists – only in nice, pure forms! – all over the world, believe it or not.’ He checked, with a glance at me. ‘Sorry, rather a lecture.’