Palace of Darkness (8 page)

Malik’s lips still moved silently. His eyes remained closed. And Cassia realized the warmth was not surrounding the pain, it was replacing it.

And as the pain receded, in its place washed in a deep and profound emotion Cassia could not name. Somewhere between terrible grief and sparkling joy, between black death and bright life, it welled up inside of her and overflowed. Tears streamed from her, flowed down her cheeks and dripped from her chin, and flowed even still, until she shook with a powerful sobbing she could not contain.

“What . . . what is it?” she whispered.

Only then did Malik open his eyes, slowly remove his hands, and smile.

The emotion subsided, the warmth drifted away.

The pain did not return.

“A gift.” Malik’s voice was like warm oil. “You have been given a gift. You have been healed.”

Cassia wiped at her face, first with one hand, then with the other. With the other!

She lifted her arm above her head, rotated her shoulder.
What did he do to me?

The healing astonished her. The emotion it had drawn forth baffled her. She felt almost sadness as it subsided.

She studied Malik’s eyes and could think of nothing more to say than “Thank you.”

He patted her cheek and called over his shoulder, “She should eat.”

Two women hurried to her bedside, as if they had been waiting for the summons. Each held a plate of steaming food, more than Cassia could possibly consume. She pulled herself to sitting, and one of the women handed her a plate of flat bread and seasoned beans, then pushed cushions behind her back.

She was much older than Cassia, but perhaps not so old as Malik. It took only a moment of watching them both for Cassia to sense the woman was not his wife. The other woman sat beside her on the bed, holding another plate. She was younger still, younger even than Cassia. Cassia knitted her brow, trying to make sense of this strange family that was not a family. She could easily read several emotions passing between them. Both women felt great love and respect for Malik. But there was also a tension between the two women.

Cassia dug into the beans. They were spicy and warm on her tongue. She closed her eyes in delight. They had eaten nothing more than hard bread and dried meat during the long journey here.

She pushed some of the beans aside on her plate. “For Alexander. He will be hungry when he wakes.”

The three laughed together. The older woman shook her head. “I cannot believe that boy could eat anything more for three days!”

They had fed Alexander while she slept? Cassia thought she should perhaps feel concern again, but there was nothing left but gratitude.

“Thank you.” She studied her plate. She had uttered that phrase too many times. They must want something in return.

Malik seemed to sense her concern. “It is a special joy of ours. To feed and to care for the sick and strangers, even for the least of them. A special joy.”

Cassia looked into his eyes, and she believed him.

“Finish your bread.” He smiled.

While she ate, the women fussed around her, bringing damp
cloths to wash her face and arms, and the older applying some kind of ointment from a tiny jar onto Cassia’s scrapes. Zeta and Talya, she discovered, were mother and daughter, though Talya must have been born late in Zeta’s childbearing years. This was their home, and Malik was their friend.

Friend
. The word made her think of Magdala back in Damascus, and she felt all the more bereft.

Again, as though he could read her thoughts, Malik spoke. “You are alone here in Petra?”

She shrugged one shoulder.
Still no pain.
“Alexander and I have come to find family. His father was born here.”

“He did not travel with you?” Malik’s eyes were kind. He already knew the answer, she could see.

“He was killed fourteen days ago.”

“What was his name?” Talya asked. “Perhaps we were playmates.”

“Aretas.”

She smiled. “Yes, I knew an Aretas. Six or seven of them, I would guess.”

Cassia sighed and set her empty plate aside.

“His parents?” Malik asked. “Do you know of them?”

“I know his mother’s name only. Gamilath.”

Malik shook his head. “Another common name, I fear. Have you nothing else?”

Cassia leaned back against her cushions and searched her memory. Aretas had told her so little of his life before they met. Snatches here and there, but nothing that could be pieced together to create a picture.

“He told me something once about his home.” She tried to call up the memory from the dark corridors of her mind. “About where it was located. Beside the Temple of al-‘Uzza.”

Malik’s head lifted sharply.

“He told me that from the outer corridor of his home he could look straight into the first courtyard of the temple. He seemed to despise both the temple and its goddess, though I never understood . . .” Malik looked at her so strangely. “What is it?”

“Aretas, son of Gamilath? And his home lay beside the Temple of al-‘Uzza?”

She nodded, fear clutching at her heart with cold fingers.

Malik looked to the two women, and Cassia saw eyebrows raised, mouths open. “What is it?”

But Malik did not answer. He stood quickly, snatched the oil lamp from the niche gouged into the stone wall, and strode across the room to where Alexander lay, still asleep.

Cassia swung her legs from the bed, stood, and was at his side before the two women could react. “What are you doing?”

Malik had bent to her son’s side and held the lamp close enough for the light to play across his beautiful face. He slept with lips parted, his thick eyelashes sweeping his cheeks like raven feathers.

The two women appeared beside them and studied Alexander as well. Malik turned to Zeta, the older of the two. “How did we not see it?”

She shook her head. “He is the very image of Aretas.”

Their words struck Cassia with fresh hope, tinged with alarm. “You knew him.” She clutched Malik’s arm. “You knew Aretas as a boy.”

Malik turned to her. “You must rest still.” He guided her back to the blankets.

She did not resist. “Tell me. Tell me who he was.”

When they had restored her to her place of ease, the three ringed the bed.

Malik spoke. “As I said, your husband’s name, his mother’s name, are both used by many parents because they are royal names.”

Cassia looked to Alexander. Aretas had indeed insisted they name him after greatness.

“But this is not why
your
Aretas had this name.”

Cassia’s breath came a bit shorter, and she waited in silence.

“Your Aretas
was
the royal house.”

“I . . . I do not understand.”

“You know of the Nabataean king, Rabbel, no doubt?”

Cassia nodded, willing him to speak quickly.

“Gamilath was his first wife. She died many years ago. They had only one son, heir to the throne. That son was your Aretas.”

That man comes from money. It’s written all over him.
Magdala’s words.

Cassia fell back on the cushions. The revelation was like falling into a cold river on a hot day. First the shock, then a welcome refreshment.
Aretas, royalty!
His family were not bandits like he was, nor struggling in poverty as she. But then, like the coldness of river water, the news sank deep into her. The prince of Nabataea! How could she ever approach them? A tremor shook her and her teeth chattered.

“Rest now.” Zeta pulled blankets over her body, all the way to her chin. “You have had a shock. More than one today, as it were. There will be time enough to think of how to breach the palace tomorrow.”

She meant to comfort, Cassia knew, but her words brought no consolation.
Breach
the palace? As though she were a hostile, invading army?

She sank down into the bedding, and the three moved away, taking the tiny lamp with them and leaving her in shadows.

She would sleep, yes. But then what?

EIGHT

M
ORNING DAWNED WITH LIGHT POURING IN THROUGH
a gap in the heavy cloths that formed the fourth wall of the home, the room where Cassia lay.

She pulled herself to sitting, again marveling at the absence of pain in her shoulder, and surveyed the room.

She had been correct in the night—she did lie in a room cut into the red stone cliffs. It extended behind her into shadow, and the side exposed to the open air was hung with blankets. She glanced at Alexander, saw he still slept, then crept to a gap in the fabric and nudged it open with one finger.

The sight stole her breath.

The city lay beneath her, as though she were a bird nesting in a cleft of the rock wall. All of Petra was contained in the narrow, curving valley, and she saw houses and temples, gardens and fountains, and above all of it: dozens of openings in the cliff wall, many elaborately carved. The floor dropped away on the other side of the blankets, a frightening fall no one could survive.

How do they get up here?

A noise behind her drew her back into the safety of the room.

Zeta brought a steaming bowl, and Alexander stretched his thin brown arms and blinked away the night. He fixed his eyes on her and smiled. She held out her arms, then retreated from the flimsy wall when he jumped from his bed and ran to her.

“You are well, Mama?”

“I am well, shekel.”

Talya set a bowl of fruit and yoghurt on the table. “Malik left in the night. I am to tell you he will help you in whatever way he can.”

Cassia smiled. “I am not sure how anyone can help me. I must gain the favor of the king, when even his own son could not.”

Talya shook her head. “I was too young to know what happened when Aretas left Petra. It is not spoken of. But it was so long ago. Perhaps . . .”

Cassia shrugged and pulled Alexander to the table. “Resentment and bitterness can live longer than even memory at times.”

They ate of the fruit, and Zeta brought more—platters of dates and honeyed bread, warm and sweet. Malik appeared, pushing through the blanket wall as though he had flown above the city and alighted in their nest. And then others came. Men and women went through the morning, asking questions of Cassia and visiting with each other. Cassia could not determine who any of them were. They seemed to be an extended family, and yet they did not arrive as smaller family groups nor address each other with family names.

They were all curious about Cassia, however. And about Alexander even more so. Cassia heard the phrase “heir to the throne” more than once, and the words both thrilled and terrified. She tried to distract Alex from their talk. He would learn soon enough of the great change that might take place in his life.

And it was far from certain. Aretas had left this place on terms
that were not good, though no one spoke of it this morning. What would his father say when she and Alexander appeared in his palace?

Cassia stood finally, drawing the attention and then the silence of the chattering group.

“We must go.” She nodded to Zeta and Talya. “Thank you for everything. You have been most gracious. Please give Malik my thanks as well.” She took Alexander’s hand. “Now, if someone could tell me how to get down from this rock.”

The room erupted with laughter.

Within minutes Cassia and Alexander were picking their way down narrow steps carved into the rock face. The staircase, if the niches could be called such, would be nearly invisible from the street, blending as they did with the variegated rock colors.

She wished she could study the city, but the descent required all her concentration, between placing her own feet on the narrow steps and watching Alex’s. The boy would have skipped down to the street level if she had let him, his fearlessness at climbing exceeding his ability.

Finally they were safely on the ground, and Cassia took the time to orient herself to the fascinating city of Petra.

The narrow gorge they’d traversed yesterday had led them only to a preview of the city’s grandeur. The astonishing facade she’d seen carved into the stone wall when they emerged from the crack in the mountains was now repeated, with variation, along the facing red cliffs that formed the natural city walls. Dark recesses like rectangular eyes dotted the rock walls from above head level all the way up to dizzying heights similar to that which she had descended. Some of these recesses were mere holes cut into the sandstone, a blank face that could be tomb or home.

But others were grand in size and elaborately carved, like the one
she saw yesterday, with columns and plinths, carved urns and figures of Isis and Dionysius, pedestal tops above the openings and ornamental friezes sculpted with vines. The combined art of Egypt, Greece, and even Rome had found a home in the walls of Petra. The effect was stunning.

To their left, Cassia could see the half circle of the amphitheatre, sweeping away from the street—the last place she remembered seeing before awakening in Zeta’s home.

The street was crowded with the press of townspeople and the combined traffic of camels, mules, and carts. She and Alex were forced to flatten themselves against the rock wall to avoid the traffic.