A.D. 30(7)

“They are Bedu—”

“She is your mother! Have you no heart?”

Maliku’s face darkened.

“I would have my Kalb in Dumah!” Rami said. “To honor my wife!”

Rami stared at Maliku, then turned and walked to the window overlooking Dumah. When he spoke his voice was resolute.

“Bring me all of that might. Bring me twenty thousand Kalb. Bring every man who would save the Kalb from the Thamud jackals who circle to cut me down.”

“You are most wise.” Maliku paused, then glanced at me. “I would only suggest that she too be sent away.”

“You will tell me how to command my daughter?”

Maliku hesitated. “No.”

A moment of laden silence passed between them.

“Leave me,” Rami said.

We both turned to go.

“Not you, Maviah.”

I remained, confused. Maliku cast me a glare, then left the room, not bothering to close the door.

Rami, heavy with thought, turned away from the window. His world had changed this day, in more ways than I could appreciate, surely.

When he finally faced me, his jaw was fixed.

“I see in Maliku a thirst only for power. Jealousy, not nobility, steers his heart. Surely you see it.”

I hesitated but was honest. “I see only what you see.”

“My son is a selfish man who drinks ambition the way his stallions drink the wind at a full gallop.”

I still did not understand why he wanted to speak to me thus, for he rarely uttered a word to me.

“You will remain here in the fortress, beyond the sight of all.”

I bowed my head. “Yes, Father.”

“If there is any trouble, you will seal yourself in the chamber of audience with your son and answer to no one but me. Do you understand?”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“You will know if it comes. But you must do this. Swear it to me.”

As his daughter I had no choice. “Of course.”

“It is of utmost importance. The fate of all the Kalb may depend upon it.”

He stared at me for a long time, then dismissed me with a nod.

“Leave me then. I would be with my wife.”

I hurried from Nasha’s chamber and returned to my room, barely aware of my surroundings, too stunned to cry.

Little Rami, now awake, lay where I’d left him, staring in wonder at the dawning of another day. He smiled, then squirmed and fussed enough to let me know that he was hungry. Light streamed in from the window, but the room felt cold. So I lit an oil lamp, gathered my son in my arms, and let him suckle.

I could feel my life flowing into him as I stroked his cheek and cherished the heat of his small body against mine. In his world there was no knowledge of death. In mine, it seemed to be all I knew. For my son’s life, I would die.

Then tears came again, silently slipping down my cheeks. I could not stop them.





CHAPTER THREE





TWO NIGHTS had passed since Rami tended to Nasha’s passing. I was not permitted to pay my respects at the shrine, but was confined to the fortress. Maliku had gone to find the Kalb after Nasha’s private funeral and the palace Marid was like a tomb, portending the fate of me and my son. Nasha’s sweet voice, once ringing through the halls with delight, now whispered only in my dreams.

Father had taken up residence in his tent just outside of Dumah with five hundred of his closest men. He often served tea to guests from the deep desert there, rather than in the fortress. Only after tea had been shared did they partake of the Bedu’s greatest pleasure: the sharing of the news.

Where do you come from? Who have you seen? Which clan is raiding? I have seen the tracks of the Tayy, seventy camels strong, traveling east from the well at Junga. My brother has seen a caravan in the west, south of Tayma, plundered by the Qudah tribe. He says more than twenty were killed and over a hundred camels laden with frankincense taken.

And then others’ opinions joined these words, each man explaining with unyielding passion his particular point of view, often the same view already expressed but in new words, for every man had a right to be heard.

A hundred times during those two days alone in the palace Marid, I imagined what news might be passing in my father’s tent now. No possibility offered me great hope.

The Bedu men told their stories much as they told their news, over and over with great theatrics and without tiring of the same tale, the rest listening as if they’d never heard it. The guest and host would exchange accounts of a time when the locust swarms blackened the sky and stripped the grazing lands of all that was green in Mesopotamia, plunging the region into famine. Or when they and their sons showed their great courage by standing up to a dozen of the Thamud in a raid that would have robbed them of all their women and camels. Surely embellishment was the norm.