Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

They rejoined their company and, when the camels’ reluctance to get up could be overcome, they moved on, following the now quite well beaten track up and over a cold pass and down to Khadna and its fields, the last village before the oasis, then the Shatt and the wilderness. Dusk was falling before they reached it and they hardly noticed the blue-clad figure of a little girl waiting outside the thorn-hedge; but clearly she could see them, and as they came out on to the straight she called out, ‘Sara!’

At this a tall, gaunt camel, a particularly ugly, awkward and ill-tempered creature that had carried Stephen over a broad stretch of shale and sand, broke into a lumbering run and on reaching the child lowered its great head to be embraced. These were camels that belonged to the village and they moved off to their usual place even before their trifling return-loads were unstrapped, while the guards and attendants set up tents. Stephen and Jacob were taken to the chief man’s house, where they were regaled with coffee and biscuits sopped in warm honey, extremely difficult to keep from dripping on to the beautiful rugs upon which they sat.

Jacob was perfectly at home; he spoke for the right length of time, drank the proper number of minute cups, and distributed the customary little presents, blessing the house as he left it, followed by Stephen. As they crossed the dark enclosure to their tent they heard a hyena, not without satisfaction. ‘I used to imitate them when I was a boy,’ said Jacob. ‘And sometimes they would answer.’

The next day was hard going, up and down, but very much more of the up, more and more stony and barren: quite often they had to lead their horses. Now there were more unfamiliar plants, a wheatear that Stephen could not certainly identify, some tortoises, and a surprising number of birds of prey, shrikes and the smaller falcons, almost one to every moderate bush or tree in an exceptionally desolate region.

At the top of this barren rise, while the Turks made a fire for their coffee, Stephen watched a brown-necked African raven fly right across the vast pure expanse of sky, talking in its harsh deep voice all the way, addressing his mate at least a mile ahead. ‘That is a bird I have always wished to see,’ he said to the guide, ‘a bird that does not exist in Spain.’ This pleased the guide more than Stephen had expected, and he led his charges fifty yards or so along the track to a point where the rock tell precipitously and the path wound down and down to a dry valley with one green spot in it - an oasis with a solitary spring that never spread beyond those limits. Beyond the dry valley the ground rose again, yet beyond it and to the left there shone a fine great sheet of water, the Shatt el Khadna, fed by a stream that could just be made out on the right, before the mountain hid it.

‘Right down at the bottom, before the flat, do you see a horseman?’ asked Stephen, reaching for his little telescope. ‘Is he not riding for a fall?’

‘It is Hafiz, on his sure-footed mare,’ said Jacob. ‘I sent him forward to give the Vizier word of our coming, while you were gazing at your raven. It is a usual civility in these parts.’

‘Well, God speed him,’ said Stephen. ‘I would not go down that slope at such a pace, unless I were riding Pegasus.’

‘I have been thinking,’ said Jacob, about a furlong later, when the going was not quite so anxious and the oasis was perceptibly nearer, ‘I have been thinking...’

‘...that we are on limestone now, with a change in vegetation - the thyme, the entirely different cistus?’

‘Certainly. But it also occurred to me that it might be better if I appeared as a mere dragoman. Since the Vizier is perfectly fluent in French, there is no need for my presence; and you would more readily reach an understanding, the two of you alone. As I am sure you have noticed, a man facing two interlocutors is at something of a disadvantage: he feels he must assert himself. I am dressed in such a manner that I could be anyone or anything. You will do better on your own, particularly if you conciliate his good will with the lapis lazuli turban-brooch - a very striking cabochon with golden flecks that a Cainite cousin let me have, a merchant in Algiers, almost next to the pharmacy. He told me that there was another Cainite, one of the Beni Mzab, a calligrapher in the Vizier’s suite; and that is another reason why I suggest being a dragoman, no more, on this occasion.’

‘May I see it?’

‘I will show it you before we are received, when I pass over the consul’s letter of presentation: you will be able to look at it discreetly, since it is in a little European box that opens and closes, click.’

‘You wrote the letter, I believe?’

‘Yes: it is in Turkish and it states that your mission is of a private and confidential nature, undertaken at the request of the Ministry. There are the usual compliments at the beginning and at the end: they take up most of the paper.’

‘Very well. This is a rather more public form of intelligence service than I have ever experienced, and it will disqualify me for many other duties of the same nature: but to be sure, a very great deal is at stake.’

‘A very, very great deal.’

They had reached the level ground, and now they rode in silence until a Barbary partridge took noisily to the air almost under their noses, causing the horses to caper, but without much conviction after so wearing a day. ‘And surely those are palm-doves?’ said Stephen.

Dr Jacob had nothing to offer apart from ‘I am sure you are right.’ But turning in his saddle, he added, ‘Perhaps we should let the others catch up, so that we may make our entrance in a reasonably stylish manner.’

Reasonably stylish it was, the Turkish guards and their horses having a sense of occasion, and they rode through the intensively cultivated fields of the oasis, all brilliant green beneath the towering date-palms, round the central pool (with the inevitable moorhen) to a low, spreading house with barns and stables scattered about. ‘The Dey’s hunting lodge,’ said Jacob. ‘I was here once as a boy.’

An official and some grooms came out of the gateway, the official calling what Stephen took to be greetings: he also noticed a particular glance exchanged between Jacob and him - slight and fleeting, evident to no one who did not know Jacob very well and who did not happen to be looking in that direction - and then the grooms led horses and packmules into the stable-yard while Stephen and Jacob walked into the fore-court.

‘This is Ahmed ben Hanbal, the Vizier’s under-secretary,’ said Jacob. Stephen bowed: the under-secretary bowed, putting his hand to his forehead and heart. ‘The chief secretary is with the Dey. Shall we walk in?’

Inside the curious pillared patio, enclosed with elaborate wrought-iron screens, Jacob said something to Ahmed, who nodded and hurried away. ‘Here is the letter,’ said Jacob, passing it, ‘and here is the little Western box.’

Stephen clicked it open, gazed with admiration at the splendid blue, the size and shape of an egg cut in two lengthways: he smiled at Jacob, who said, ‘I shall leave you now. The - what shall I say? - the announcer will come through that door’ - nodding at it - ‘in a minute or two, and announce you to the Vizier.’

The minute tended to be a long one, and Stephen looked secretly at the stone again: he had rarely seen so true an azure; and the gold rim echoed the golden specks within the stone quite admirably. But a most unwelcome comparison welled up in his mind. Diana had possessed an extraordinary blue diamond - she was buried with it - a blue of an entirely different nature, of course, but he felt the familiar chill grip him, the sort of frigid indifference to virtually everything; and he welcomed the opening door. It showed a crosslooking very tall greybeard, his height increased by a lofty white turban, who beckoned imperiously and walked before him into a room where a middle-aged man in white clothes was sitting cross-legged on a low couch, smoking a hookah.