rootstock would survive transportation.”
“And are you satisfied, now that you have seen my roses?”
In spite of the emir’s friendly manner, I would have been very careful to be as flattering and diplomatic as possible. Someone accustomed to having people kiss the ground at his feet might not like to be reminded that his best blue rose was rather inadequate.
But King Haimeric surprised me. “No, I am not satisfied, glorious one,” he said in a good-natured tone, “as I’m sure you would have guessed even if I lied to you. The roses your grower showed us out at the edge of the city are an excellent start toward blue, closer than anything I’ve seen in the west, but they are not the true, sapphire blue which I had heard rumored you’d grown. I expect you have something much better hidden away in the palace, and have that rose garden at the entrance to town, where anyone can find it easily, to distract all but the most knowledgeable rose fanciers.”
The emir was silent for a moment, either considering his reply or deeply insulted. There might in the morning be six more headless bodies on the edge of town, waiting for the desert to purify them. On either side of me, I could hear Ascelin and Hugo take determined breaths, though neither had worn his sword to the emir’s dinner.
But the emir said in a mild tone, “You can see all the roses I have in my palace here in the courtyard. Do any of them seem finer to you?”
In the dancing shadows of the lanterns all the roses looked gray to me. “These are fine roses but they are not your true blues either, glorious one,” said the king. “If you have blue roses in the palace, you have concealed them well.”
“But what good would a blue rose be if no one but I could see it?”
“You would know you had succeeded where no one had ever succeeded before,” said the king. “Is the personal satisfaction enough?”
The emir did not answer. The girls now brought us a salad of lentils, onions, and olives, and when the melody struck up again from back in the shadows they resumed their dance. I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to give it proper attention.
Since so many of my sudden convictions turned out to be wrong, I didn’t know whether to doubt myself, but I now felt suddenly convinced that I knew what the older Prince Dominic had found in the Wadi Harhammi. “Something wonderful, something marvelous,” he had called it. Ever since the eastern kingdoms, I had wondered if it was the Black Pearl. Now I felt sure that it was a blue rose.
When the slave girls paused in their dancing, King Haimeric spoke again. “You are not sure whether to trust me with your secret, glorious one, and doubtless with good reason. I would not trust foreigners with the secret of a blue rose myself.” In fact, King Haimeric would have told anyone interested in his roses anything they wanted to know, but I let this pass. “Perhaps instead I can ask again what I asked before. Did a group of pilgrims come through here, four men, one of them a wizard with red hair? Their leader, Sir Hugo, is a cousin of my wife.”
The emir did not answer for a moment, and the only sound was the quiet chirping of a bird somewhere along the eaves-a real bird, this time.
“Very few Christian pilgrims come down to Bahdroc from the Holy Land,” the emir said at last from out of the shadows. “And I presume that most of those who reach my city never come to the palace. No, I cannot say that I have ever seen your friends.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Perhaps my vizier may know more.” He clapped once, and a slave girl darted away.
In a few minutes the vizier we had seen briefly before came into the courtyard, panting and arranging his satin robes as though he had been summoned from the bath or from bed. I wondered how this man, who I presumed wielded enormous power of his own within the city, reconciled himself to being virtually the slave of the quiet old man in the pearl-embroidered raiment.
He stood stiffly before the emir, his hands at his sides. “No, of course I have seen no pilgrims such as you describe. If any such people did come to Bahdroc, I would most certainly have been informed. Two months ago several western women were here, looking, they said, for the bones of some holy saint who had lived as a recluse in the desert even before the days of the Prophet. I found it all quite unlikely. They would not be the pilgrims you were seeking? I thought not.”
The emir dismissed his vizier with a slight movement of one hand. The slave girls brought us bowls of yogurt and cucumber and little cups of strong coffee.
“Then if our friends did not come to your city,” said King Haimeric, “I must apologize for troubling you about them. But let me ask you something else.” The king was nothing if not persistent. “Have you heard the rumors that King Solomon’s Pearl has been found again?”
The emir was silent again. But when he spoke it was as though there had been no pause. “I am surprised, travelers from the West, that you have heard the old legends. I have not heard anyone speak of the Black Pearl for many years. It was sunk beneath the Outer Sea centuries ago and could scarcely have been found again.”
“Then I have one final request,” said the king. “We believe that our friends were on their way to the Wadi Harhammi.”
We believed no such thing, but I kept quiet.
“Tomorrow could you have someone direct us on the right road toward it?”
This time the emir’s pause was much longer. For a second the courtyard was dead still, then I heard a low growl from one of his big spotted cats. “Again, you seem to have been listening to the old legends,” the emir said at last. “If you had listened better, however, then you would have realized there really is no such Wadi, that even in the legends its position is constantly shifting. The old slave women tuck the children into bed with stories of the fairies who live in the Wadi Harhammi, but that is all. By the way, I am not sure you ever mentioned it, but what is the name of your kingdom in the west?”
“Yurt,” said King Haimeric.
The emir did not answer but clapped again at once. “Show our guests to their quarters,” he said to the slave girls. “They will be staying with us all this week.”
They helped us up from the couches with light hands and giggles. Hugo held the hand of his slightly longer than necessary. “I wonder if we’re going to find out more about these degrading and debilitating duties the slaves have to perform,” he whispered to me. “I notice there’s a girl for each of us, not counting Maffi, but he’s too young anyway.”
But the king dismissed the girls as soon as we reached our room. I rather hoped the look of disappointment they gave us was not feigned.
“I am afraid the emir lied to us,” said King Haimeric as soon as the door shut behind them. “Perhaps he didn’t have his wife join us for dinner because he didn’t want her involved in this, or because he was afraid of what she might let slip. It was clear both he and his vizier knew perfectly well whom I meant when I asked about Sir Hugo’s party.”
“And he recognized the name Yurt,” I said. “I wish you hadn’t mentioned it, sire. It seems to have meaning here in the east. There has to be a reason it was carved on the onyx of Arnulf’s ring.”
King Haimeric dismissed this. “No one east of the mountains has heard of Yurt; even a lot of the other western kings don’t recognize the name.”
“That may be,” I persisted, “but it was when he heard us mention Yurt that he told us we’d be staying. I even wonder now if Sir Hugo’s party might not have been captured specifically as bait for us, because they knew he and his party had a connection to Yurt.”
“I didn’t have a slave woman to raise me,” put in Maffi, “but I certainly never heard fairy-stories about the Wadi Harhammi. I would guess the emir knows exactly where it is.”
“The mapmaker knew where it was,” said Ascelin, “even if he didn’t mark the road. But the emir doesn’t want us leaving the city to find it. He calls us his guests, but if we tried to leave we’d find the doors barred against us.”
“And what is he planning to do with us?” said Hugo. “The wizard says that if my father’s party was ever here, they aren’t here now.” He paused for a long moment, and when he continued his voice was low and rough-edged. “Does that mean they’re all dead?”
V
