learn more. There was something Ysidro hadn't seen in the cemetery... Something that occurred after he'd gone? She looked back over her shoulder, to see the hakawati shair shouting his wrongs to the man selling beads, and though at this distance he was little more than a threshing puppet of dirty brown rags, she could tell he was pointing at her.
Sudden tears stung her eyes, born of weariness and frustration and the hurt of being criticized when she had done no wrong.
"Forgive him, madame." It was the man in the yellow turban, waiting for them in the blue marble shadows of the colonnade beside the gate. He stepped down and bowed to them, though Lydia had the impression that he was a man of some importance here. "He is an old man and believes that those who do not dress or eat or speak as his parents did were created by some other God for purposes ill to mankind."
Lydia halted, peering up at him. Above the graying beard the dark eyes were bright and kind, and not as old as she had thought. His robes smelled of tobacco, cooking, and soap. "I'm sorry if I... if I said something wrong. I truly meant no harm."
"He is a very frightened man, hamam, and frightened men are easily angered. He claims he is pursued by demons who live in this city, and he will not be alone, not even to sleep. He sleeps on the floor of the soup kitchen. Do not judge him harshly. They are real to him."
"No," Lydia said, remembering the abyssal darkness of the streets after nightfall. She had dreamed last night, in troubled sleep, of something that had passed the house, singing beneath the balcony in a high, thin, tuneless wailing that no one but she could hear. She had risen-or, later, she thought she had only dreamed of rising-and stumbled half blind to the heavy lattices that overhung the street, but she had seen nothing, or maybe just a stirring in the dark below. Margaret had rolled over and sighed in her sleep.
"He spoke of a... a gola, dwelling in the tomb of someone called Hasim al-Bayad."
She pronounced the words carefully, thanking heaven for ten years of James' quiet emphasis on correct sounds.
The holy man frowned, puzzled a little, then said, "In the west of Africa- Morocco and Algiers-a gola is said to be a kind of female devil who dwells in desert places, with a goat's feet and the face of a beautiful woman. She lures travelers from the road, drinks their blood and eats their flesh."
"A woman." Lydia repeated the words.
Anthea Farren. And she would know what had become of James.
He nodded. "Hasim al-Bayad was the imam of this mosque-" His small gesture seemed to touch the whole of the graceful, weightless stone that towered above them. "- many generations ago. A good man whose tomb was venerated in former times, though almost none seek it out now, for it lies some distance from the Adnanople Gate, away to the north of the main road. You may know it by the remains of an iron fence around it, though it is decayed almost to nothing; but the tomb still stands. But if you value your life, hatnam-if you value your soul- do not go to that place alone or after the sun has left the sky."
Looking into those dark, worried eyes, it did not even strike Lydia as odd that he gave his warning to her rather than to the male who clearly took the role of her protector. She shook her head and said, "No, I won't. I promise." She turned to depart, taking Razumovsky's arm again, then on impulse turned back.
"Is it permitted," she asked hesitantly, "to... to buy prayers to help someone? Someone who's in trouble? He's not a Mohammedan," she added apologetically and the man in the yellow turban smiled.
"There is no greater miracle in the world than rain," he said. "And, as the Prophet Jesus pointed out, it falls on the heads of the just and the unjust alike. Give your alms to the next beggar that you meet. I will pray for your friend."
"Thank you," said Lydia.
Your husband is a dead man. It was extremely difficult to make conversation with the prince on the way back to the carriage.
Owing to the prince's consular duties that afternoon, it was not possible, he said, for him to accompany Lydia and Margaret on a tour of the cemeteries, but he insisted