A Whisper of Disgrace(34)

She could hear the terrible pain which laced his words and saw the way that his face had frozen into a forbidding mask. The hard gleam in his eyes was piercing through her—as if daring her to ask him more—and she suspected that a look like that might put most people off. But Rosa did dare, because what did she have left to lose? ‘What happened?’

Kulal shook his head, but that did nothing to keep the memories at bay. He remembered a story that his English tutor used to tell him. The story of a man called Orpheus, who had been told never to look back. But Orpheus had looked back and had been left broken-hearted as a result. Kulal had never forgotten the moral of that story—that looking back could destroy you, and going forward was the only way that you could survive. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said bitterly.

‘Oh, but I think it does,’ said Rosa softly. ‘And I think you want to tell me.’

He turned on her then, his face dark with the deepest sorrow Rosa had ever seen, and she held her breath as she waited.

‘I caused the death of my mother,’ he said bitterly.

For a moment she didn’t speak. She wanted to brush away the bald statement like unwanted dust, but the suffering she saw on his face warned her not to make light of it. ‘How?’

Kulal glowered. He had been expecting her to respond with a placatory ‘Of course you didn’t!’ because that was what everyone always said, even if their accusatory eyes carried an entirely different message. ‘You want to hear how?’ he demanded. ‘Then I’ll tell you.’

Rosa leaned back against the pillows and shiny cushions and nodded. ‘Go on, then.’

There was something so unexpectedly calm about her that Kulal did something he’d never done before. He completely disregarded the fact that she was naked and that her cushioned breasts were just crying out to have him lay his head on them. Instead he opened his mouth and let out the words which had been smouldering away inside him for so long that they seemed to taint the air with their darkness. ‘I was six years old,’ he said. ‘And a very naughty child, apparently.’

She nodded. ‘Most six-year-old boys are naughty.’

‘I don’t need you to try and reassure me, Rosa!’

‘I was merely pointing out a fact.’

‘Well, don’t!’

She shrugged. The fury in his voice would have been off-putting to a lot of people, but she had grown up with furious men whose word was law and she knew how to deal with it. She lay very still and watched him.

Kulal picked his next words carefully; he felt like someone plunging his hand into a basket of fruit, knowing that angry wasps were buzzing inside. ‘It had been a hot summer, piteously hot—with the worst drought our country had ever known. Sandstorms had been raging in the desert for weeks and we had all been confined to the palace. We were going stir-crazy. I remember feeling that so vividly. I remember the constant drip of sweat, despite the fans that whirred overhead. My older brother was away in Europe, and I missed his company. But my mother said we would go on a picnic as soon as the weather improved and one morning the storm just died down, as if it had never happened. There was a strange calm to the air—and even though my mother complained of a slight headache, I was eager to leave.’

He was silent for a moment. How eccentric the memory could be, he thought. How was it that something which you’d blocked for over thirty years could suddenly reappear in your mind, as crystal clear as if it had happened the day before? Were these things he remembered himself, or things he had been told? Or maybe they were just a combination of things he had pieced together after the event.

‘We were driven out to Saxrasahl—a very famous dried-out plain which was once an oasis and is surrounded by intricate rock formations.’

Rosa nodded. She wanted to say that it sounded beautiful, but this was something she could never say, for his voice was leaden with the sound of approaching doom and she knew he would never associate such a place with beauty.

‘We ate our food, but I was eager to play and there was nobody to play with. My mother’s headache had grown worse and the driver and the bodyguards were too hot to join in with me. My mother told me to stay within eyeshot, but I remember being engrossed in my game. I remember climbing to the top of a rock, but the dryness of the terrain meant that it started to crumble. I … screamed.’ He closed his eyes and his heart began to pound. ‘And I heard my mother’s voice calling my name—and soon after that, I saw her face appear, for she had climbed the rock to find me.’