The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart Page B

to quarrel with you. I’m certain your visit will do her a world of good – in fact, I can’t help thinking it would be nice if she took a sudden shine to you and pressed you to stay for a few weeks, then
you
can sit and read the Koran to her at three in the morning, and give me a night off.’
    ‘Is that what you do?’
    ‘It has been known. Shall I suggest it to her? How long can you spare?’
    ‘I’ll let you know in the morning.’
    He laughed, and pushed open a wooden gate that hung a bit crooked under a weed-grown arch.
    ‘In here,’ he said, and ushered me past him.

4
    And still a Garden by the Water blows …
    E. Fitzgerald:
The Rubáiyát
    of Omar Khayyám
    ‘O H !’ I said, and stood still.
    John Lethman shut the gate behind him, and came to my elbow. ‘Do you like it?’
    ‘
Like
it!’ I drew a breath. ‘What did it used to be?’
    ‘Oh, just the Seraglio Garden. I’m afraid it’s terribly neglected.’
    It was, of course, but this was a large part of its beauty. After the prospects of sun-baked stone and dusty ruin that had been assaulting my eyes all afternoon, the riot of green and flowers and the shimmer of cool water was wonderful.
    It followed the now familiar pattern of the courtyards, a paved space decorated with flowers and bushes, with a pool at the centre, surrounded by shaded arcades out of which opened the various rooms and offices. But this place was huge. Apparently the Seraglio rooms and garden filled the whole width of the palace, stretching well back over the surface of the plateau. On three sides of this vast space ran the archesof the long colonnades, throwing their pattern of sun and shadow over the doorways of what had been the women’s apartments. On the fourth side – to the north – the colonnade marched with the outer wall where a row of delicate arches looked out across the Nahr el-Sal’q towards the village and the distant snows of the High Lebanon. High though these windows were, they were heavily barred with lattices so close that a hand could hardly have been thrust through them.
    Within this frame of columns, long ago, some expert had laid out a big formal garden, and had somehow led water down from some high spring to feed the trees and flowers and fill the pool – no ornamental pond this time, but a wide stretch of water, almost a lake, which held at its centre a small island crowned with a grove of trees. On this, at the heart of the green grove, I saw the glint of gilded tiles – the roof of a miniature building like an exotic summerhouse or folly; a Persian-style kiosk with an onion dome, decorative pillars and latticed arches and shallow, broken steps.
    There had once been a bridge across to the island, a slender, pretty affair; but now half-way over a broken gap yawned, some six feet wide. The lake itself was paved thickly with lily leaves, and at the edge the irises had spread into dense battalions of spears. All round the brink went a wide paved walk where ferns and briars thrust up the cracked marble slabs. From the shingled roofs of the arcades and down between the pillars jasmine and purple bougainvillaea and roses hung festooned like cobwebs, and every cornice was white with birds’ droppings and fully inhabited bydoves calling ‘
Yusuf, Yusuf
’, like mad things. The contrast between the formal design of oblong lake, graceful arches and elegant kiosk, and the riotous natural growth that had invaded them, was excitingly attractive. It was like a formal Persian painting gone wild.
    ‘Not a weed out of place,’ I said. ‘It’s gorgeous! And to think I was always sorry for those poor women. Well, that settles it, Mr Lethman, I’ll move in tomorrow for a long, long stay. How long can you do with me?’
    ‘Wait till you’ve seen your room before you commit yourself,’ he said, leading the way.
    The room was midway along the south side of the garden. It was a plain square room, with a highish ceiling and chequered marble floor and patterned