“Well,” she said, “perhaps I wouldn’t feel it quite as I do now. But I hope that I’d act rightly, all the same.”
“Here is what I think, Chava. It’s easy to consider yourself altruistic when you live among the poor and the downtrodden. But if you were removed from their side, it wouldn’t be long before they faded from your mind.”
She sat up, pulling the sheet tightly around herself. “Why are you saying these things? Why are you so angry at me?”
“I’m not angry.”
“Clearly you are.”
“I’m not. But if you wish to make me so, keep asking.”
She stood then, and dressed in fuming silence, and fastened her cloak around her neck. “Do not come to see me again,” she said, “until you can be more civil.” And she left, not waiting for a reply.
The Jinni arrived at the shop that morning in a foul mood, the Golem’s parting words still ringing in his ears. Until you can be more civil. Well, she’d placed the decision in his hands; she’d have no one to blame but herself if the result wasn’t to her liking. And yet every night he stayed away was a night she must spend inside and alone. He thought of the locket he’d forged, his resolution never to become her jailer—and yet she seemed to insist upon it at every turn; it was completely maddening . . .
Arbeely was already at his desk, opening the morning mail. “Good morning,” he said as the Jinni came through the door. “Here, this just arrived. You might find it amusing.” He held out a small cardboard box.
The Jinni took it. Inside, nestled in excelsior, was an ordinary-looking rock. It was squarish in shape, roughly the length of his palm and nearly black in color. “Someone sent us a rock?”
“There’s a brochure underneath it.”
The Jinni tipped out the rock and the excelsior, and found a folded brochure decorated with a sketch of an enormous steam shovel. The words Superior Iron from Hibbing Ironworks were written at the top. The Jinni opened it, and read:
This iron ore of the highest grade comes from the heart of the Mesabi Iron Range, the source of all of Hibbing Ironworks’ products. Our smelting process refines it to our exacting standards, using . . .
“Imagine paying to send a rock through the post,” Arbeely said. “It’s a clever bit of advertising, but no wonder Hibbing’s iron is so expensive—” He broke off, interrupted by a spell of coughing.
“Another cold?” the Jinni said, somewhat irritated. He’d been hoping Arbeely would let him smoke in the shop again.
“It comes and goes with the weather,” the man replied, once he could.
“Isn’t there medicine you can take?”
“I tried codeine drops, but the nausea was worse than the coughing.”
“At least this proves that my cigarettes aren’t to blame,” said the Jinni, and received a scornful look in reply. He held up the box. “Can I have this?”
The man shrugged. “Go ahead, it’s no use to me.”
In his secret room, the Jinni lit the lanterns, cleared the bits of wrought iron from the floor, sat on the cushion, and hefted the rock in one hand. It was heavy, and jagged-edged. In the lantern-light, the sheared surfaces held a dusting of red. He brought it to his nose, inhaled its warm, sharp scent—and felt, not fear, but the remembrance of fear: childhood dares and taunts, boasts and bravado, the excitement of hovering with one’s playmates outside an unknown cave, daring one another to go in first.
I ought to show this to Chava, he thought—and then remembered their fight. He tossed the rock aside, rubbed his face with his hands, then impatiently extinguished the lanterns again. He’d go to the roof, he decided, and clear his head.
“Arbeely,” he called as he left the supply room, “if you feel like distributing your biscuits—”
But Arbeely lay on the floor, unmoving.
11.
The weeks that Sophia spent at the ruins of Carchemish were some of the happiest of her life.
She’d planned to stay only three days, not wanting to be a nuisance: enough time for a tour of the ruins, and to dine once or twice with Mr. Hogarth, if he was at his leisure. And indeed, the man had been refreshingly welcoming, and had answered her questions with care and attention. But the true surprise had come in the form of Hogarth’s young assistant, a young Oxfordian named Thomas Lawrence, whom everyone called Ned. If Hogarth was the governing mind of the dig, then Ned Lawrence, it seemed, was its household spirit. He was a small, disheveled lad, with manners at once courtly and artless, who could talk for hours on subjects that roamed from Hittite fortifications to Spenserian verse. He’d lecture her like a professor, then turn boyish and brotherly, insisting that she come see the spot where a pack of wild boars had charged him. The excavation itself hadn’t begun yet, only the surveys, so she’d arrived too early for any spectacular finds—but it was more than worth it to stand with Lawrence and gaze out at the Euphrates running high with snow-melt, and be glad at the company of this strange young man who seemed not to notice her own strangenesses.
For two weeks Sophia stayed at Carchemish, sketching the river views and helping Lawrence improve his Arabic. And she would’ve stayed longer still, if it hadn’t been for the arrival of Miss Gertrude Bell.
For years Sophia had heard tales of the adventuress, and more than once had been mistaken for her. She’d even gone so far as to read Miss Bell’s travel memoirs, and thought them well written, if typically British in their droll condescension. When she learned that the woman planned to visit, Sophia grew excited at the thought of stories divulged, opinions compared. Perhaps Sophia wasn’t as experienced as Miss Bell—but surely, she thought, the woman would prove an ally.
Then the lady herself arrived, with her caravan of servants and tents and trunks—and at once
