Free Shadow of the Moon by M. M. Kaye Page B

centuries old, the other was a tale of Sabrina’s own lifetime - of the slaying of the elder brother of that very Dost Mohammed against whom Lord Auckland’s Army of the Indus was advancing in the hills beyond Kandahar. India had not changed greatly because a handful of London merchants had brought much of her territory under subjection. She had been conquered before, many times, since the days when Sikander Dulkhan (Alexander the Great) had fought his battles on her soil and built his roads and tanks and left behind his nameless viceroys. Greeks, Huns, Arabs, Tartars, Pathans, Persians, Moguls - India had seen them come and had watched the fires of their power blaze bright and die again leaving nothing but ashes; and had gone on her way …
    Some of all this was in Sabrina’s mind as she stood on the river terrace of the Casa de los Pavos Reales and watched a vast yellow moon rise through the hot dusty twilight.
    Daylight does not linger in the East as it does in cooler lands, and the Eastern twilight is barely a breath drawn between day and night. One moment the river ran gold in the last reflected glow of the sunset, and in the next the moon had laid a shining pathway across its dark surface and Sabrina’sshadow lay black on the moonlit terrace. A jackal howled again, nearer this time, and although nightfall had brought little or no alleviation of the oppressive heat, Sabrina shivered as though with a sudden chill, and drawing the light scarf of Indian gauze closer about her, she turned back to the house.
    The familiar white walls with their wrought-iron balconies and deep window embrasures looked as friendly and as peaceful as they had on that other night when she and Marcos, newly wedded, had stood on the terrace among the lemon trees to see their guests ride away across the moonlit park. But it was hotter here than it had been down by the river. The stone flags of the terrace burnt under Sabrina’s thin, flat-soled slippers, and she could hear the old coachman’s dry little cough and the restless stamp and click of the horse’s hooves on the hard ground, and realized that it was getting late and that they wished to return. But the thought of the small hot rooms of the women’s quarter at the Gulab Mahal filled her with revulsion and she lingered among the trees, reluctant to leave.
    A shadow moved on the ground beside her and Zobeida touched her arm, and presently they were driving away down the long moonlit avenue, and the white walls of Pavos Reales were swallowed up by the trees.
    â€˜Perhaps I shall never see it again,’ said Sabrina slowly, and did not know that she had spoken aloud.
    The heat of the city met them like a blast from a furnace, but the streets and bazaars were uncannily quiet. It was too hot for speech or movement and men had dragged their string cots into the roadways and lay in the hard moonlight, sprawled and silent like the victims of some medieval pestilence.
    There was a riderless horse standing just within the gateway of the Gulab Mahal. A tired horse, lathered with sweat, its head drooping and the white dust of the roads thick on its heaving flanks. It stood among the dappled shadows of the flame trees, but Sabrina knew it. She knew all the Pavos Reales horses, and this was Suliman, who had been ridden by one of the servants who had accompanied Marcos to the south.
    Her heart leapt with a sudden wild joy and she stood up, swaying to the movement of the carriage as it jolted over the uneven paving of the courtyard.
    But it was not Marcos. A messenger only, bearing letters, said the servant who opened the carriage door. Sabrina brushed aside Zobeida’s hand and sprang to the ground. A letter from Marcos at last! Perhaps to say that he would be back in a few days. Only a few more days to wait. She ran down the short passage and up the two steep flights of narrow ill-lighted stairs that led to Juanita’s rooms, laughing as she ran.
    After the dimly