spices. The two ships met again in the harbour of
Trincomalee in Ceylon. There, they took on board cloves, saffron, coffee beans and choice packets of blue star sapphires. Then, in company, they had returned to Good Hope, to the anchorage off the beach of High Weald.
Batula was able to recite from memory the quantities of each commodity they had purchased, the prices they had paid, and the state of the various markets they had visited.
Tom and Dorian questioned them carefully and exhaustively, while Mansur wrote everything in the CBTC journal. This information was vital to their prosperity: any change in the state and condition of the markets and the supply of goods could spell great profit or, perhaps, even greater disaster to their enterprise.
'The largest profits still lie in the commerce of slaves,' Kumrah summed up delicately, and neither captain could meet Tom's eye as he said it. They knew his views on their trade, which he called 'an abomination in the face of God and man'.
Predictably Tom rounded on Kumrah. 'The only piece of human flesh I will ever sell is your hairy buttocks to the first man who will pay the five rupees I ask for them.'
'Effendi!' cried Kumrah, his expression a Thespian masterpiece: an unlikely mixture of contrition and pained sensibility. 'I would rather shave off my beard and feast on pig flesh than buy a single human soul from the slave block.'
Tom was about to remind him that slaving had been his chief enterprise before he entered the service of the Courtney brothers, when Dorian, playing the peace-maker, intervened smoothly: 'I hunger for news of my old home. Tell me what you have learned of Omani and Muscat, of Lamu and Zanzibar.'
'We knew that you would ask us this, so we have saved this news for the last. Those lands have been overtaken by momentous events, al Salil.' They turned to Dorian eagerly, grateful to him for having diverted Tom's wrath.
'Good captains, tell us all you have learned,' Yasmini demanded. Until now she had sat behind her husband and held her peace as a dutiful Muslim wife should. Now, however, she could restrain herself no longer, for they were speaking of her homeland and her family. Although she and Dorian had fled the Zanzibar coast almost twenty years ago, her thoughts often returned there and her heart hankered for the lost years of her childhood.
It was true indeed that not all of her memories were happy ones. There had been times of loneliness in the isolation of the women's zenana, although she had been born a princess, daughter of Sultan Abd
Muhammad al-Malik, the Caliph of Muscat. Her father had possessed more than fifty wives. He showed interest only in his sons, and could never bother himself to keep track of his daughters. She knew that he was barely aware of her existence, and could not remember any word he had spoken to her, or even a touch of his hand or a kindly glance. In all truth, she had laid eyes on him only on state occasions or when he visited his women in the zenana. Then it had been only at a distance, and she had trembled and covered her face in terror of his magnificence and his godlike presence. Even so she mourned and fasted the full forty days and nights stipulated by the Prophet when news of his death reached her in the African wilderness whence she had fled with Dorian.
Her mother had died in Yasmini's infancy, and she could not remember a single detail about her. As she grew older she learned that she had inherited from her the startling streak of silver hair that divided her own thick midnight black tresses. Yasmini had spent all her childhood in the zenana on Lamu island. The only maternal love she had known was given to her unstintingly by Tahi, the old slave woman who had nursed her and Dorian.
In the beginning Dorian, the adopted son of her own father, was with her in the zenana. This was before he reached his puberty and underwent the ordeal of the circumcision knife. As her adopted elder brother, he protected her, often with his fists and feet from the malice of her blood brothers. Her particular tormentor was Zayn al-Din. When Dorian defended her, he had made a mortal enemy of him; the rancour would persist througout their lives. To this day Yasmini remembered that dire confrontation between the two boys in every detail.
Dorian and Zayn had been only a few months short of puberty, and their departure from the zenana and entry into manhood and military service was looming large. That day Yasmini was playing alone on the terrace of the old saint's tomb, at the end of the zenana gardens. This was one of her secret places where she could escape from the bullying of their peers, and find solace in daydreams and childish games of fantasy. With Yasmini was her pet vervet monkey, Jinni. Zayn al-Din and Abubaker, both her half-brothers, had discovered her there.
Plump, sly and vicious, Zayn was bravest when he had one of his toadies with him. He wrested the little monkey from Yasmini and threw him into the open rainwater cistern. Though Yasmini screamed at the top of her lungs and jumped on his back, pummelling his head and trying to scratch lumps out of his skin, he ignored her and began systematically to drown Jinni, ducking the monkey's head each time he surfaced.
oummoned by Yasmini's screams Dorian came racing up the staircase
from the garden. He took in the scene at a glance, then launched himself at the two bigger boys. Before his capture by the Arabs, his brother Tom had coached Dorian in the art of boxing, but Zayn and Abubaker had never before come into contact with bunched, flying fists. Abubaker fled from this terrible attack, but Zayn's nose burst in a spray of scarlet at the first punch, while the second sent him somersaulting down the steep staircase. When he struck the bottom, one of the bones in his right foot snapped. The bone set ill, and he would limp for the rest of his life.
In the years after he had left behind his childhood and the zenana, Dorian had become a prince in his own right and a famous warrior. Yasmini, however, was forced to remain behind, at the mercy of Kush, the head eunuch. Even after all these years, his monstrous cruelty lived vividly in her memory. Yasmini grew to lovely womanhood while Dorian fought his adopted father's enemies in the Arabian deserts far to the north. Covered in glory he had returned at last to Lamu, but he had almost forgotten his adopted sister and childhood sweetheart. Then Tahi, his ancient slave nurse, had come to him in the palace and reminded him that Yasmini was still languishing in the zenana.
With Tahi as a go-between they had arranged a dangerous tryst. When they became lovers they were committing a double sin from the consequences of which not even Dorian's exalted position could protect them. They were adopted brother and sister and, in the eyes of God, the Caliph and the council of mullahs, their union was both fornication and incest.
Kush had discovered their secret, and planned a punishment for Yasmini so unspeakably cruel that she still shuddered when she thought about it, but Dorian had intervened to save her. He killed Kush and buried him in the grave the eunuch had dug for Yasmini. Then Dorian disguised her as a boy and smuggled her out of the harem. Together they escaped from Lamu.
Many years later, after his father Abd Muhammad al-Malik had died of poisoning, Zayn still limping from the injury Dorian had inflicted ascended the Elephant Throne of Oman. One of his first acts as caliph was to send Abubaker to find and capture Dorian and Yasmini. When Abubaker caught up with the lovers there had been a terrible battle in which Dorian had killed him. Yasmini and Dorian had escaped once again from Zayn's vengeance and been reunited with Tom. However, Zayn al-Din sat on the mighty Elephant Throne to this day, and was still Caliph of Oman. They knew they were never entirely safe from his hatred.
Now, sitting by the campfire on this wild and savage shore, she
reached out to touch Dorian. It was almost as though he had read her thoughts, for he took her hand and held it firmly. She felt strength and courage flowing from him into her like the balmy influence of the kusi, the trade wind of the Indian Ocean.
'Recount!' Dorian ordered his captains. 'Tell me these momentous tidings you bring from Muscat. Did you hear aught of the Caliph, Zayn al- Din?'
'Our tidings are all of Zayn al-Din. As Allah bears witness, he is Caliph in Muscat no longer.'
'What is this you say?' Dorian started up. 'Is Zayn dead at last?'
'Nay, my Prince. A shaitan is hard to kill. Zayn al-Din lives on.'
'Where is he, then? We must know all of this affair.'
'Forgive me, effendi.' Batula made a gesture of deep respect, touching his lips and his heart. 'There is one in our present company who knows all this far better than I do. He comes from the bosom of Zayn al-Din, and was once one of his trusted ministers and confidants.'
Then he is no friend of mine. His master has tried on many occasions to kill me and my wife. It was Zayn who drove us into exile. He is my mortal enemy, and he has sworn a blood feud against us.'
'All this I know well, lord,' Batula replied, 'for I have been with you since that happy day when the man who then was Caliph, your sainted adoptive father al-Malik, made me your lance-bearer. Do you forget that I was at your side when you captured Zayn al-Din at the battle of Muscat and you roped him behind your camel and dragged him as a traitor to face the wrath and justice of al-Malik?'
'That I will never forget, as I will not forget your loyalty and service to me over all these years.' Dorian's expression became sad. 'Pity it is that my father's wrath was so short-lived, and his justice too heavily tempered with mercy. For he pardoned Zayn al-Din and clasped him once again to his
