I whirled round, convinced someone was playing tricks: Toby, perhaps, hiding under the bed or perched on the roof outside, but the cat and I were alone, and the former had its attention firmly fixed on the other paw. I shook my head to rid it of the cobwebs. All this had been too much; it was just an accumulation of stress, that was all. I was thinking for myself, not the cat. I wouldn't eat raw fish, so obviously I had arranged a recipe in my mind and spoken it out aloud. But the voice hadn't sounded like mine. . . .
I went down to the kitchen with a few coins in my hand and arranged for the fish and tarragon. I drew a fish in the dust on the floor, mimed the filleting and picked a few leaves of dried tarragon from the selection hanging from the rafters. I then pointed to the pan and water, and supervised the poaching, indicating when I considered it done. By then I was so hungry myself that I bought a leg of chicken and ate it on the spot.
Opening the bedroom door the cat leapt off the bed and advanced to meet me, tail held high and gently waving. I set down the dish on the floor and removed the cover, the enticing smell making my mouth water.
"It's hot," I said unnecessarily, for the poor thing was obviously deaf, like all blue-eyed cats, but it had the sense to sit back and wait for the steam to disperse. Risking scalded fingers I knelt down and examined the fillets, pulling out a couple of bones that had been missed and discarding the tarragon. "There, nothing left to choke on. I'll put some water in the cover . . ." Stop talking to yourself, Sophy!
After a couple of minutes it started to eat, delicately: a gourmet rather than a gourmand, obviously. As it ate I had leisure to study it more closely. It was completely unlike the chunky tabbies, gingers, blacks, black-and-whites and tortoiseshells I had seen in England, nor had it the snub-nosed appeal of the Persian. Neither did it resemble the shabby alley-cats we had come across abroad. For a start he was much bigger and undeniably elegant, slim and streamlined, with a pointed muzzle and long ditto tail, this last with a tiny kink at the end. His colour was the most striking, of course, dark chocolate at the extremities and a cream body. Without touching him I could see that the fur was dense and soft. His claws looked shorter and blunter than most cats, but it was those beautiful blue eyes that I found the most appealing; not a dark blue, rather that translucent pale blue of the tiny flowers we used to call "babies' breath" when we were children—pity about the deafness. Then I noticed that his ears flicked back and forth from every noise outside, and I wondered . . . perhaps he spoke some strange tongue that was not transmitted through the Ring.
Finished, he drank deeply, gave me a glance as if to say "thank you" and leapt back onto the bed to give himself a thorough wash from head to toe, wincing a little as he licked his side, where I could see the skin had been broken, probably by that wretched pitchfork. I put the dish, cover and bowl on the rickety table under the window. I was deathly tired after my expedition, but the bed was occupied, and I didn't want to risk those claws, remembering what I had seen earlier.
"Er . . . Could you move up a bit? I'd like to have a rest." But how could I expect it to understand?
"Sure," said the cat in my sleepy head, moving to the foot of the bed, and without thinking any further I lay down and immediately fell asleep.
"What on earth is that?" asked Toby, bursting into my room, but as the answer was perfectly obvious he didn't wait for one but instead launched into an enthusiastic account of how he and Ky-Lin had found a man willing to guide us to his brother's village, some one hundred and fifty miles on towards our destination, and that his brother would be sure to take us the rest of the way.
"Apparently the guide has goods to deliver to his brother, knows where he can hire half-a-dozen ponies, and Ky-Lin says—at least I think he says—he nodded anyway and only did a bit of the bargaining—that the price was reasonable. What do you say to that?"
"I say you've done a wonderful job," I laughed giving him a hug. "Both of you!" For of course it had been Ky-Lin who had found the man and done the bargaining through Toby's mouth. "When do we start?"
"Tomorrow at dawn," said Ky-Lin, jumping from Toby's shoulder to mine. "We meet him outside town at the beginning of the track south-east. Each of us will have a pony, and there will be two for transporting our food and blankets and clothes, etc."
"Well, we'd better get going, then! We have to get packed, buy some food and—"
"And I'm starving!" interrupted Toby. "Haven't had anything since breakfast . . ."
I discovered I was starving too, and went down the corridor to rout out Claude and Danny. We partook of a hasty meal of fried fish, meat and rice, then set out to do the serious shopping: firewood, rice, salt, oil, dried meat, fish, vegetables and fruit, and extra water-bottles. What with packing and organising, I completely forgot about the cat, though when I at last returned to my room at about nine that night I felt an uncomfortable pang to find that he had gone through the still unshuttered window. He had chosen his freedom. I just hoped he would be all right.
Ky-Lin had already hidden under my pillow, so I took down the dirty dishes to the kitchen and had a quick wash under the pump in the yard and then sought my bed, where I had no trouble falling asleep.
To be awoken by a thump in the middle of my stomach.
"Ouch! What the hell . . ." Sophy! Language . . .
"Sorry! Missed my footing . . ."
Voices in my head again. I turned over and looked at my fob-watch by the moonlight coming in through the open window. Three A.M. At my feet the cat had curled himself up.
"Thought you had gone . . ."
"Just exploring . . . And using the usual toilet facilities. May I ask you a favour? I am afraid that my side is quite painful. I would not wish it to become infected."
I stumbled out of bed and lit the lamp, still convinced I was dreaming, but then one did strange things in dreams. Like talking to injured cats. I dampened one of my diminishing store of clean handkerchiefs and bathed the contusions on the cat's ribs. The skin was broken, weals breaking out on the surface where the fur had been torn away.
"There . . . That better?"
"Let me," said a voice from my pillow. Ky-Lin spoke to the cat. "If you will allow me?"
In my increasingly confused dream the cat nodded, and Ky-Lin moved down the bed and touched his little pink horn to the cat's side. Immediately the skin seemed to heal, the swelling going down.
"Thank you, Sacred One . . ."
"No problem," said Ky-Lin. "And now let's get some sleep. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow." He blew out the lamp and lay by my pillow, while the cat curled up at my feet again. I slept without further dreams until Ky-Lin nudged me awake just before dawn. We had paid our dues the night before so started to carry our luggage down the stairs and into the street, where it piled up formidably. Toby and the others were to carry it down to our rendezvous, but it took three journeys, and a sleepy sun was reddening the grey dawn as we finished loading our ponies, Mustaq, our guide, muttering at our tardiness.
Even though it was so early, people were already stirring, and I paused to pick up some savoury pancakes from a yawning stall-holder. On either side of these alleys bedding was already being hung out to air on the balconies, cooking fires being lit, sleepy children carrying buckets to the nearest well, bundles of rags coming to life again as vagrants and beggars.
Juggling the hot pancakes in my hands, I saw that the cat was following me. It wasn't coming with us, that was for sure, but it was probably hungry. Carefully I dissected the coolest of the pancakes and laid it on the ground.
"There you are, pussy-cat; goodbye and good luck!" and off I trotted to join the others and hand out the pancakes. The guide provided us with some revolting coffee, which wiped any lingering sleep from anyone's eyes. I was just shortening my stirrups ready to mount, Danny having already lengthened Claude's, who was looking extremely uncomfortable and quite precarious, when I felt a nudge on my right leg. Oh, no! Not the cat again!
"Shoo!" I said. "Go away! Look I gave you something to eat, your hurts are better and cats fend for themselves."
"Just a moment," said Ky-Lin from my pocket, which he had swapped from Toby's a few minutes past. "How many are we, counting the Eg?"
Peculiar question, given the circumstances. "Er . . ." I counted on my fingers. Me, Toby, Ky-Lin, the Eg, Danny and Claude. "Six. Why?"
"Summer had seven with her on both her first and second journeys, at least for part of the time. So did the One before her, but that was a long while ago. But the Ring remembers."
And as if to echo his words, the Ring gave a tiny, painless throb.
"You mean that seven is a lucky number?"
"It is considered to be so by some."
It was now obvious which way the conversation was leading. "You want us to take the cat?"
"My wishes have nothing to do with it. I was just trying to remind you of your options. I neither want you to ignore the obvious, nor to make a decision you might later regret. I also believe you should not pass up on any luck that comes your way."
I thought about it. It had been the Ring that had urged me to rescue the cat, and I had to admit it had been no trouble. But it couldn't run behind a horse—
"It can perch quite comfortably on the the pony carrying the luggage," said Ky-Lin, reading my thoughts for the umpteenth time of our acquaintance. I looked down at the subject of our conversation, and a pair of beautiful blue eyes gazed back at me.
"I won't be any bother," it said, quite clearly.
"I thought you couldn't—didn't—"
"He was shy," said Ky-Lin.
When we rejoined the others the cat leapt gracefully onto the back of the luggage-carrying pony and settled down, wedged comfortably between the haversacks.
"Is he coming with us?" asked Toby.
"I suppose so."
"What's he called?"
"Cat," said Danny.
"Tom," said Claude, accurately.
"No," said Toby. "He deserves better than that. He's very beautiful—no, I suppose you would call it handsome for a boy."
"Beau," I said. The cat raised its head and looked at me.
"Near enough," it said, and settled down again. So Beau-cat he became, fulfilled his promise of being no trouble, and was seldom far from my side when we were on the ground.
So off we went into the unknown, through the undulating steppes, always tending higher and higher. Sometimes we rode through grass as high as the horses withers, and other times over stony ground, and I would have been lost in five minutes, but Ky-Lin assured me we were headed in the right direction.
We progressed more or less uneventfully. I cooked for us every night, leaving enough cold for breaking our fast and a lunch-time snack with, as I said before, the competent help of Claude; he seemed to be a loaves-and-fishes man—able to make a little go a long way. Having watched the sort of herbs our earlier fellow-travellers had gathered, I was able to vary the taste of the ubiquitous rice and couscous a little. This was nothing to the spicy smells that our earlier guide, Mustaq, conjured up, although when I begged a pinch of his mixture, it nearly burnt the roofs off our mouths.
At night he erected a kind of tarpaulin for us, and we slept on the ground, wrapped in our blankets and with our cloaks for pillows. It was the first time I had slept on bare ground and I'll swear that every pebble and stone in Turkestan, or wherever we were, was digging into my hips, spine and shoulders, but after the first couple of nights I became used to it, having the sense to clear the space and scrape out a small depression before I lay down.
I must admit that I was intrigued by the sight of the night-shirted men, for they bore no resemblance to the statues and paintings of gods and athletes I had seen in various art galleries and museums in London. When we had travelled earlier in the wagon, there had been a blanket slung between them and me, but now it was amusing to see the strategems they underwent when they were changing: hiding behind the pony-lines, running off a couple of hundred yards and crouching down or doing as we used to do at school—undressing under our nightgowns. They were not as adept at this as I was . . .
Of course many of the workers we had passed in the fields, and some of the herdsmen also, wore the minimum of clothing, merely a brief loincloth, but this seemed normal and natural in the native population—but Claude and Danny had such skinny shanks! And without regular exposure to the sun, these limbs looked like white pipe-cleaners, especially Claude's!
The village we were headed for was some hundred and fifty miles distant and we reached it in just over a week. All the while we were gradually climbing, so gradually that sometimes it wasn't until we stopped for a meal or overnight camp and looked back the way we had come that we saw how far we had climbed. Now we could see the mountains we were aiming for; just a bluish suggestion on the horizon, but day by day gaining shape. Ky-Lin reckoned we had about another five hundred miles to go before we found a suitable pass though the mountains, which sounded pretty daunting, especially as we were well into September. Now that we were that much higher, the grass was not as tall, which made the going easier for the ponies, and we were instead passing through mini-meadows of blue, yellow and white flowers, dancing in the perpetual easterlies.
We spent two days in Mustaq's brother's village because, like many other horse-owners, their ponies grazed well away from the village and had to be rounded up. In the meantime we were lodged at one end of a smelly stable, divided from the sheep and goats by only a wooden paling. We ate well, though: pancakes, unleavened bread, cheese, lamb kebabs and spicy fried vegetables.
Mustaq's brother, Makub, was as like his brother as could be: small, dour and uncommunicative, with the same droopy moustaches. With the help of Ky-Lin we agreed a price, half down, the other half when we reached the mountains.
I bought provisions, though of course the price was much higher so far from a town: more rice, oil, dried meats and vegetables and fruit, firewood, plus some hard and rather smelly cheese. The poor pony carrying the food looked swaybacked by the time we had finished, but we knew these foods would have to last us three weeks at least, till we got through the mountains, as there were no more settlements on the way.
We made good progress during the next few days and Ky-Lin whispered that we had covered at least a third of our journey to the mountains.
The ground was becoming more broken up, and several times we crossed small gullies and streams, and even came across the odd tree. On the evening of the fourteenth day since we had left the village, our guide, Makub, suddenly became more convivial, and suggested he join us for supper, bringing a couple of spicy dishes to serve with our rice.
I didn't entirely trust this sudden change of heart, and something—perhaps it was the Ring—warned me against his food, and more particularly against the flask he offered round afterwards. I couldn't consult with Ky-Lin, as he had crept off some time before to forage for some fallen seeds he had seen earlier, but it was with a sinking heart that I saw even Toby take a draught from the flask, although he made a face and refused more. When it came to my turn I merely raised the flask to my lips and pretended to swallow, out of courtesy, but to my dismay Claude and Danny set to with a will until the flask was empty. They then broke into raucous song, music-hall ballads with dubious lyrics, some decidedly risqué, and I regret to say even Toby joined in.
It was very late when I managed to get them to bed and by then was exhausted myself and could only give the returned Ky-Lin an abbreviated version of what had happened. I fell asleep to the sound of loud snoring which drowned out the more pleasant sounds of the night.
It was still dark, though dawn wasn't far away, when I was awoken by a panicking Toby.
"Sophy, Sophy, wake up!"
I rolled over. "Whassa matter?"
" 'E's gorn!" It must be bad: he was back to Cockney again.
"Who's gone?"
" 'E 'as. The guide! I went out there to be sick, 'cos me stummick's fair terrible, and there's nothin' an' nobody there. There's nothin' but us! The dirty git's run orf with everythin'! Ponies, gear, the lot!"