“So I have heard,” Yamina said dryly.

She thought it was typical of the English to get themselves into such a position of power that no one could move without their approval.

She could imagine Lord Castleford being just as autocratic and she told herself that she would never have anything in common with men who looked like ramrods and who used their power as a battering ram to get everything they wanted.

‘They are not human!’ she told herself.

Putting the herbs into a saucepan on the fire, she said to Hamid,

“I will go upstairs and see how my father is. You say he was asleep when you came back?”

“Sleeping very peacefully, Mistress. I leave him. Sleep is better than any other medicine.”

“That is true,” Yamina said, “and the Master has been sleeping badly lately, as you know. If the herbs don’t bring down his fever, Hamid, I cannot think what we shall do.”

“I will try to find doctor, Mistress.”

“No, no!” Yamina said quickly. “It would be too dangerous. We have managed all these months. It would be crazy to send for one now.”

She moved towards the door as she spoke and then she realised that Hamid was looking uneasy as if he had something to say but did not know how to say it.

She knew him so well that she could read his feelings without his having to express them and now she asked quickly,

“What is it, Hamid?”

“Bad news, Mistress!”

“Bad news?”

Yamina’s voice was sharp.

“I learn in town today they intend to search the houses – all the houses!”

“What for?” Yamina asked, even though she knew the answer.

“For Russians, Mistress!”

Yamina drew in a deep breath.

In front of her eyes she could see the spy who had been dragged along the roadway being hit and reviled, his face pouring with blood, his eyes closing in the agony of death.

“What shall we do, Mistress?”

Hamid’s question was hardly above a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Yamina answered. “What can we do when the Master is so ill that we dare not move him?”

She looked at the servant as she spoke, her eyes very dark and frightened in her pale face.

“We must put our trust in Allah,” Hamid said, the words coming automatically to his lips.

“Allah?” Yamina cried. “I think that both Allah and my God have forsaken us.”

Chapter Two

Feeling ashamed of her lack of self-control, Yamina picked up a jug of fresh lime juice that she had made earlier in the day and put it on a tray with a glass ready to take up to her father.

The fever had made him very thirsty in the night and she knew that when he awoke he must have something cooling to drink.

As she busied herself, she was aware that Hamid was watching her and she said quietly,