All was ready—except the hour—and all were radiant, expectant and happy. There was feasting and love-making, goodwill and fellowship. And the priests moved about with an arrogant swing of their hips, and all the people salaamed at their approach, as if they’d been gods themselves, instead merely the servers of gods, and dressed in their best garb.
At the full of the mid-day heat a great hush fell. There was no breath of air, nothing moved. All Rukh seemed waiting in eager silence like some great beast poised to spring. The hours crawled seemingly stagnantly through the water clocks, and the green and blue dragon-flies seemed asleep on the down of the bronze and lemon thistles.
Lucilla grew calmer and braver as the slow moments went, because the end was nearer. It was something of stimulant, and something of narcotic too, that so soon it would be over—strain, fear, suspense gone forever.
Only the young ayah came near her—bringing her food and drink, silently offering her attendance. No message came from the Raja, and she sent him none. No message could have come, unless written, or brought by him himself—since none left in his service now could speak any word she’d understand.
Traherne felt turning to stone. He no longer was bound, but he scarcely moved. They brought too to him food and drink. He took what he could, and waited stonily—neither patient nor impatient. The long night had sapped his emotion. He was numb rather than tormented. Tension and regret (the air flight had been his suggestion) and pallid fear had mercifully gnawed away his power to feel or to suffer much.
They had not met since he’d been pinioned in the snuggery, and dragged roughly from it. No message—except thought’s throbbing wireless—had reached either from either. Neither had heard anything of the other.
But—however dulled their senses, however lulled their pain, each watched and wished for the sun to sink, and each listened ceaselessly with straining ears to catch the first distant throb of a far-off aeroplane’s engine.
None came.
The sun was sinking at last, slowly, surely.
And again expectant human noises and stir came in the palace and out in the rocky, mountainous open. And again hatred, blood-lust and fanaticism belched through the shimmering air, and the stench of marigolds and cocoanut oil, and the reek of lewd, guttural songs.