The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart Page B

his mouth, and he shook his head violently, and even partially loosed his panic hold of the door to flap his hands at us like someone driving hens.
    ‘Please—’ I said.
    Hamid silenced the old man with a snapped word and a gesture. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Hamid,’ I said decisively, ‘this settles it, I insist on getting in. If I can’t see my great-aunt, I’ll see the doctor, if he’s here. If he isn’t, then someone must write his name and address down for me, and I’ll go and see him straight away. Tell him that. Tell him I insist. And if you like you can tell him that my family can make quite a bit of trouble if anything should happen to my great-aunt, and the family not be allowed to know about it.’ I added: ‘And for pity’s sake if there’s anyone at all in the place who
can
talk to us, we want to see them, and fast.’
    ‘I’ll tell him.’
    How he did actually express my demands I have no idea, but after a further few minutes of wrangling the porter, filmed eyes turned up hideously to heaven and palms thrown up to disclaim all responsibility, pulled open the door at last and let us through.
    Hamid gave the ghost of a wink at me as he stood back to let me pass him. ‘I told him you were exhausted with the walk from Sal’q and refused to wait outside in the sun. If we’d once let him shut the door I doubt if we’d ever have heard from him again.’
    ‘I’m sure we wouldn’t. For goodness’ sake comewith me, won’t you? I mean, something tells me I may not be welcome.’
    ‘I wouldn’t leave you for worlds,’ said Hamid comfortably, taking me by the elbow to steer me into the cool darkness. ‘I only hope that you find all is well with the Lady … and I may easily have been mistaken in what that old dervish was trying to say. Well, at least we are inside … That alone is something to tell my children’s children.’
    Behind us the gate creaked shut, and there were the ominous sounds of the bolts being replaced. As my eyes adjusted themselves to the dimness I saw that we were not actually in a passage, but in a high barrel-roofed tunnel about fifteen feet long which ended in another heavy door. To either side of the tunnel was a smaller door. One of these was open, and in the dim light of a slit window in the inner wall I saw an ancient truckle-bed covered with tumbled blankets. The porter’s lodge, no doubt; perhaps originally a guardroom. The door opposite this was shut.
    The old man opened the door at the tunnel’s end, letting in a shaft of bright light. We followed him into a big courtyard.
    This would be the outer court of the original palace, the
midan
, where the Emir’s people would gather with gifts or petitions, and where his troops would show off their horsemanship with games and mock fights, or ride in to dismount after battle or the hunt. Under the archways on three sides were buildings which must have been stables and harness rooms and perhaps quarters for soldiers; on the fourth, to our left as weentered, was a high wall beyond which I saw a glimpse of green. In its heyday, with the bustle of servants and the tramp of horses and rattle of arms, it would have been an impressive place. Now it was quiet and empty, but the scuffed dust showed recent evidence of beasts, and the place smelled of horses.
    The porter did not pause here, but led us right-handed across the
midan
and in under the arcade, through another door which gave on a darkened passage. Through this his white robes shuffled dimly ahead. Vaguely I glimpsed passages going off to the left and right, and doors, some of them open on rooms where it was too dark to see anything; but in one of these some kind of skylight shed a glimmer on sacks and boxes and a stack of broken chairs. The passage took three right-angled turns through this labyrinth before it led us out into another courtyard, this time small, and little more than a light-well lined with arched grilles, and one blind wall against which was piled a stack of