Read Online The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart - Free Book Online

timber. As we passed I saw out of the corner of my eye a streak of movement which, when I looked sharply that way, had ceased. Nothing. But I knew it had been a rat.
    Another corridor; more doors, some of them open and giving on dilapidated and dirty rooms. The whole place had the air of something deserted long since, and lived in only by rats and mice and spiders. Not a floor but was filthy, with gaps in the ornamental tiling; the wall mosaics were dim and battered, the window grilles broken, the lintels cracked. A heavy, dusty silence slept over everything like a grey blanket. I remember that aswe passed some crumbling wall a rusty nail fell from its socket with a clink that made me jump, and the rustle of plaster falling after it sounded like a puff of wind in dry leaves.
    It was a far cry from the ‘enchanted palace’ that imagination – more powerful than reason – had led me to expect. I began to wonder with tightening nerves what I should find at the end of this quest. ‘Stark raving bonkers’ had been Charles’s verdict, and had seemed, as he delivered it, no more than faintly comic; but here, following the shuffling guide along yet another corridor with its dim and dwindling prospect of warped and gaping doors, its uneven floorings, its smell of years-old decay, I began, quite fervently, to wish I had not come. The thought of coming face to face with the combination of helplessness, senility, and perhaps sickness, which must live at the centre of all this decay like a spider in the middle of an old dusty cobweb, could fill me with nothing but dismay.
    Suddenly we were out into another courtyard. I had completely lost my bearings by this time, but from the fact that beyond the roofs on the far side I could see crests of feathery green, I guessed we were somewhere towards the back of the palace.
    This court was about fifty feet square, and at one time must have been as ornamental as the one where Charles and I had talked in Damascus; but now, like all else, it had fallen into disrepair. In its better days it had been floored with marble, with blue tiled arcades and pretty pillars and a pool at the centre. At the foot of each pillar stood a carved marble trough for floweringplants. These were still full of soil, but now held only grass and some tightly clenched, greyish-looking buds. There was one spindly tamarisk hanging over the broken coping of the pool. Somewhere, a cicada purred gently. Grey thistles grew in the gaps of the pavement, and the pool was dry.
    Under the arcade to one side was the usual deep alcove in the shadow where, up a single step, was the dais with seats on three sides. I would have distrusted any cushions that this place might produce, but I need not have worried; the seats were of unpadded marble. Here the porter indicated that we should sit, then, with another grotesque bout of yammering directed at Hamid, he turned and went. Silence came back, broken only by the churring of the cicada.
    ‘Smoke?’ asked Hamid, producing cigarettes. He lit mine for me and then wandered back into the sunlight of the courtyard, where he squatted down with his back against a pillar, absently narrowing his eyes against the brilliant sky where the trees beyond the wall waved their green feathers.
    ‘If she does not receive you, what will you do?’
    ‘Go away, I suppose, once I’ve seen the doctor.’
    He turned his head. ‘I am sorry. You are distressed.’
    I hesitated. ‘Not really. I hardly know her, and I’m pretty sure she won’t remember me. She spent most of her time out East till her husband died, and after that she only lived in England for about two years – that was when I was very small. She left fifteen years ago, for good, when I was seven. I haven’t seen her since the time she came to say goodbye. I’d hardly be surprised ifshe just sent a message back now to say she can’t even remember my name. That is, if the dervish gets it right … I wonder if he can give a message at all?