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That night at Bart's cottage, Romelle appeared at dinner wearing black, except for a nosegay of deep- purple wood violets pinned to her breast, and Eugénie's earrings.
"Now that I have fulfilled my duties as the Lady Tara and a living goddess, I am returning to normal," she announced to Bart, Brad, and Chavadzy. "I am still Philo's widow. I felt outlandish in Mongolian costume today. The garments were beautiful, but I think a Mongol woman would wear them better than I. They are not natural to me. This culture, as much as I like it, is not mine. Frankly, I am ready to go home."
As the men stared at her in surprise, her most private thoughts raced ahead.
If I remove myself from this world, I shall be safe. I want to paint. I want to walk in the Place Dauphine. I want to be near my own things. I want to sleep in my own bed. Yes, if I go home, I can forget about all this. I can forget about temples and lamas...and Dayan.
Little was said at the table after that. Both Brad and Chavadzy begged to be excused and went off together to the caravansary.
There was a full moon. Bart found her in the garden after the others had left. She was sitting on the edge of the wishing well, quietly humming to herself.
"What's that tune?" he asked softly.
She lifted her head and smiled. "Sempre Libera, from La Traviata. It means 'Always Free.' You might say it's my theme song. People think of me that way."
"Do you remember the portrait your mother painted of me?"
"It hangs over the mantel in my bedroom, Father, beside Seurat's portrait of her."
"Have you ever noticed a little detail about my eye?"
She thought back to the day many years before when Lucien Daudet remarked upon it. "Do you mean her self-portrait in your left iris?"
He nodded. "I do. That's the way it was with me. Beth was always in my head. She lived there long after she was dead. She lives there still. There's someone in the other eye, too, Romelle."
He tapped his right cheek. "It's you. You've always been with me. I want you to know how much you are loved."
He sat on the other side of the wishing well.
"Father, I do want to go home, but I want you to come with me. You are all the family I have."
He shook his head. "I wish that I could, my darling girl, but there is still much for me to do. I cannot give up on Alexis. I cannot let him die."
"There will be no more Magic Wine without the missing ingredient. Why couldn't you try to develop something at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, or even open a lab at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore? They say its a very forward-looking medical school."
"The red lucerne, if it is anywhere, is here," he replied. "Daughter, just give me a little time. Just give me the summer. Perhaps the miracle will happen. I promise you, if it does, I'll turn the formula over to Dash. He's still a brilliant medical man. And I'll go home with you. I swear it."
She ran around the well and embraced him. "I'm going to hold you to that, Father. We'll resolve everything this summer."
He looked at her shrewdly. "Everything, daughter? Which one is it going to be?"
She pulled away from him. "How did you know?"
He laughed. "I'm not blind. I think even Rebel knows. You'd better ask him which one he prefers."
The dog lay napping in the moonlight. At the sound of his name, he sat up and looked their way.
"Well, Great Hunter," grinned Bart, "will it be Brad, or will it be Dayan?"
"It will be neither!" declared Romelle. "Rebel has already made a choice."
As Kathy had taught her to do, she cupped her hands around her mouth and whispered to Rebel, "General Robert E. Lee!"
Memories of puppyhood in Virginia stirred in his canine brain. He rose on his haunches, lifted his muzzle, and bayed at the moon.
The next morning, Rebel led the Living Buddha, mounted on the huge white stallion, at a trot across the valley.
"Extraordinary dog!" said Chavadzy, riding close to Romelle. "He always seems to know where we are going, even when we don't know."
She laughed. "I told him this morning we are looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."
Brad rode alongside. "And I reminded him that Alexis commissioned him to find the Golden City."
"Perhaps I ought to show him the charts I drew up last night at the temple with my father, pinpointing the exact spot where the ray struck the escarpment," said Dayan. "Madame...or, rather, Romelle...you told me I should use my engineering skills for my country. Let's see if I've done a good job!"
Dash had explained the expedition when he brought the Living Buddha and Dayan to breakfast at the compound.
"We must make an effort to find the Golden City. No searches have ever been made in the valley itself, naturally, because you can see there is no Golden City here! The legend may be false, but we must try. The area indicated by the ray appears to be a solid wall of igneous rock halfway up the escarpment.
"The Living Buddha and I think that perhaps we might find a message, or a map to the city, carved in the wall. We may have to lower someone from the top of the escarpment. This morning, we intend simply to investigate the valley floor below the striking point."
When they reached the base of the escarpment, they found an area overgrown with berried evergreens of a poisonous variety repugnant to all animal life.
"Doubtless these were planted to discourage grazing, which would also attract herdsmen," Dash surmised.
"They are gnarled and ancient," added Bart, "implying they were sown here long ago."
The entire party scouted for a pathway up the escarpment. The Living Buddha wheezed back and forth, looking up to Heaven, rolling his prayer wheel, and chanting "Om mani padme hum."
Romelle followed him, chanting in English, "The jewel is in the lotus," until she noticed that Rebel was missing.
"Has anyone seen my dog?" she inquired in general. "God forbid he should snack on those poison berries. Rebel! Rebel!"
She called his name several times.
There came a distant bark.
"I hear him," said Brad, "but I don't see him."
The Living Buddha began to shout, waving his prayer wheel at the sky.
"There!" Dayan exclaimed. "Up there! The Living Buddha has found Rebel. He's on some kind of cliff. He must be. I can only see his head peering over."
"Rebel!" Romelle cried. "You come down here this minute before you fall! Shame on you!"
No sooner had the words left her lips than all realized the significance of his climb. Their excitement mounted.
"Yes, Reb, little fellow," cajoled Brad, "come on down. Let us see how you got up there."
Rebel's head disappeared.
"Spread out, everyone," ordered Dayan. "Look in both directions to see where he comes out."
A few minutes later, the dog burst from a screen of thick bushes.
He had found a narrow, steeply graded path.
A thicket of the poisonous evergreen concealed the entry between two large boulders. Dayan took a large, heavy knife from his saddlebag and cut his way through.
"That's a wicked weapon, sir," commented Brad. "Strange for a priest to carry a thing like that."
Dayan turned to him with a tolerant smile. "Priest or no, God will not part these bushes as He did the Red Sea for Moses. We must carry our own resources in this wild country. When you instruct the Phantom General's cavalry, perhaps your pupils can teach you a few survival skills you may need here."
He tossed a smaller saddlebag at Brad, who caught it deftly.
"That contains food for the day," Dayan said. "Perhaps you will carry it for us, Lieutenant. As you can see, I came prepared for many eventualities."
He then instructed everyone to bring water canteens.
The path upward curved in and out among boulders. It was often choked with brambles and weeds which had to be chopped away.
Exhausted by the climb, the corpulent Living Buddha finally declared a period of rest. He sat down on a large rock, withdrew a fan from his long sleeve, and fanned himself vigorously while the others lingered behind to catch their breath. Rebel sat at his feet panting, perhaps as a gesture of respect.
Suddenly, the Living Buddha stopped fanning and began to speak excitedly.
Dash translated: "Look at the dog. He sniffs the air. I smell it, too. Strange odor!"
Romelle moved farther up the path. "How odd! It's exactly as if the old sweeper in the Place Dauphine gathered up the autumn leaves and burned them. They make an acrid odor that lingers in the curtains for days."
Chavadzy chuckled. "There are no curtains here. Let us go on. How close are we to the striking spot, Prince Dayan?"
Dayan looked across the valley, framing the distant Grand Terrace with his fingers. "We are close, I should say. Very close."
Abruptly, Bart emitted an explosive breath.
"My God!" he cried.
He rushed past them up the path. Rebel raced with him.
Directly, they heard him shouting: "The miracle! Hurry, Romelle, it's our miracle! "
She ran, thankful her jodhpurs rid her of the encumbrance of skirts. She rounded the next boulder and burst on to a promontory angled so that it could not have been seen from above or from the valley floor or even from the Temple of Dragon's Heart.
Here, the smell of burnt leaves was overpowering. Her father knelt in a large patch of the mysterious red lucerne. He was weeping.
"Romelle!" he cried when he saw her. "The legend of the ruby is true! It says that where the Seventh Eye sees is the answer to all, that salvation is at hand. Alexis is saved! Look over there behind the boulder, and you will see ordinary purple lucerne. But in the open area of the cliff, the plants touched by the ray have turned red. They have been chemically changed. I have read the papers of Becquerel and the Curies about radioactivity. Perhaps this is an example. It was the smell that alerted me. When Dash's father first gave me the glass canister containing the ancient leaves, I opened it...and they smelled like this!"
He lifted a handful of leaves to her nose.
"That's what a miracle smells like, darling," he said.
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