The Treasure_ A Novel - Iris Johansen [93]
He smiled. “It’s my dark soul. I merely wished to hear your thoughts on the subject.”
“You’ve heard them. Now take me back to the house. All this talk of famine has made me hungry.”
“YOU MAY USE THE GRAIL,” Tarik said. “But Layla and I will go with you, and if we think the grail is in danger, don’t expect us to let you keep it.”
Kadar nodded.
“This is Tarik’s decision. I hope you’re satisfied. You played on his guilty feelings very well,” Layla said. “It’s not my will. I think it complete madness. I’ll be watching you closely.”
“I’m sure you will,” Kadar said. “I’ll be watching you too.”
She looked at him inquiringly.
“I’d judge you to be a dangerous woman if thwarted.”
She met his gaze. “More than you dream.”
“And that in the past you probably played on Tarik’s feelings yourself.”
“Yes, I did. I’d have used anyone to break free of the priests and that house I hated,” she admitted calmly. “But that was long ago.”
“How long?”
She glanced at Tarik. “Ah, questions. He’s been thinking as you bid him.”
“I keep my promises,” Kadar said. “You wanted me to ask questions. I’m asking them.” He turned to Tarik. “You said that at first you didn’t believe in Eshe. You do now?”
Tarik nodded.
“Why?”
“The only way to test it was to take it ourselves. One evening Layla and I had a celebration. We had honey cakes and wine and at the end of the evening we drank a toast.” He shrugged. “And the next day there was nothing different. We didn’t know what to expect, but there should have been something.”
Layla smiled, reminiscing. “There was something. A headache from too much wine.”
“True.” Tarik returned her smile. “And the conviction that all of our work was for naught.”
“Your conviction. I still believed.”
Tarik nodded. “I wanted only to forget and go on with our lives. We made plans to run away from the city. I managed to smuggle Layla out of the city to my brother, Chion, in the country. I was going to follow the next week.”
“But you didn’t?”
“The priests had found out Layla was visiting me the night before she left the city. They decided to try to persuade me to tell them where she’d gone.”
“Persuade?”
“They tortured him,” Layla whispered. “They broke all the bones in his foot, but he told them nothing.”
“I was fortunate that was all they had time to do. The head librarian was my great friend and he had influence at court. He managed to talk Ptolemy into making the priests free me and then found a way for me to leave the city.”
“He didn’t walk for a year.” Layla’s tone was stilted. “And when he did, it was the way he does now. He was a fool. He should have told them where I was.”
“We’ve talked of this before,” Tarik said. “Stop blaming yourself. If I’d told them, they’d have killed me. I did it for myself.”
She shook her head.
“And the priests didn’t find you?”
“No,” Tarik said. “When I was well, we left Egypt and went to Greece. My brother, Chion, went with us.”
Kadar said, “The brother who went mad.”
“It wasn’t Tarik’s fault,” Layla said defensively.
“I didn’t say it was. I wouldn’t know. But I’m trying to find out. If you didn’t go mad after taking the potion, why would Chion?”
“He didn’t go mad at once. It was later.”
“How much later?”
Tarik met his gaze. “Two hundred years.”
Kadar went still. “Two hundred . . .”
“As Layla said, he was a gentle, simple man. He had seen too many loved ones die.”
“Two hundred years.” Kadar couldn’t get past that incredible statement. He shook his head. “It’s not possible. I thought perhaps eighty. Though that, too, stretches the imagination.”
They both looked at him, waiting.
He knew the question for which they were waiting. “How long ago did you take the potion?”
“Ptolemy the Fourteenth was in power. He died the year we left for Greece and his sister Cleopatra was given the throne by Julius Caesar. That was more than forty years before