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By Root 3387 0

to Mount Sinai. His father said he wanted to do it in nine. He said they could count on twenty-five miles a day at the rate that a laden camel could go, which was two and a quarter miles every hour. There were only four places where they might find some water. They set out crouched in panniers, two to a camel, and from the start, began their travels in darkness, eating cold food because fires might warn robbers. They had six camels and a guard and three drivers and Brother Lorenzo. Jan kept his wax tablet at his belt, so that he could say he was making notes all the way. Their first full day, they set out by moonlight and didn’t dismount at all until evening. He grew tired of Lambert always calling to Kathi, who was perfectly well.

The Sinai peninsula lay between Egypt and the Holy Land, its upper edge along the shores of the Middle Sea. Moses and the Holy Family had crossed it in different directions. It hung like a breech-clout between the gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, which forked at the top of the Red Sea. After rounding Suez, they travelled down the side of the Red Sea, and were shown where the Children of Israel had crossed. He had wanted to stay there. The water was deep blue and pleasantly ruffled, and full of coral and curious fish and extraordinary vessels. Also, they were on a beaten highway of sorts and were making good time.

Father, however, would have none of it. Three days out, they had joined, for better security, a large caravan belonging to the Emir of Tor, and Father was in a ferment of anxiety, claiming that they kept forgetting to behave like Greek monks (their disguise), and that the Governor was growing suspicious. The wretched Scots priest kept grumbling as well.

The Emir’s concubines had come along with him. They travelled in exquisite panniers, fitted with cushions and curtains and awnings. He and Lambert and Kathi had gone to admire them, which may have caused the misunderstanding which led to their eventual parting. Under the veils, some of the girls were quite pretty. The worst offender was Kathi, who was dressed like a boy and got her face scratched.

In the end, they sneaked away before dawn on the sixth day, just before the junction where their road led them inland. Continuing south, the Emir’s party could no longer trouble them. On the other hand they were now alone, but for the ever-composed Brother Lorenzo, their single guard, and their camel-drovers. Here, among the limestone rubble, the low hills whose hollows were filled with wind-designed russet sand, were no tracks. And ahead, about to close in on them, were the mountains through which they must weave, changing direction whenever they required to avoid danger: danger from Bedouin troupes, Bedouin ambushes; danger from the pebbled heights, the scorching wind, the dearth of water. He had not really been frivolous. He had been afraid, and anxious to push it aside while he could. But he was not going to admit that.

That night, on their own in the desert, his father gave him a lecture. It had to do, as usual, with the spiritual objects of pilgrimage, with Jan’s place as heir to the family tradition, and with the example of pious devotion which a young man of his high education would be expected to display.

Jan listened, saying nothing. It was all right for an old man like his father to speak of a symbolic tryst in the heavenly kingdom. His father had one foot in it already, and would probably get there this journey, if he didn’t stop his eternal agitation. Jan Adorne loved the Baron his father, but at the end of all this, there awaited him (if he was lucky) some portentous dull job in the Curia. Time enough for solemnity then.

At the end, as usual, he was sent off to write up his notes, despite his objection that brigands would be drawn to the sight of his candle. Then, he saw, Kathi was being marched aside for a session on her own.

She knew she deserved it. She was stiff. She had been frightened, of course, as Jan was, but she had also been dazed by the novelty all about her: by the sight of the Red Sea at sunrise, laid like turquoise