LITMIR.BIZ

       Epigraph

      Dayr, the Lion of the Desert, to Hester, the Star of the Morning, sends greeting, with love and service. Those who obey the sabre of Dayr, hold the Great Desert in the hollow of their hand, even as the ring encircles the finger. Warriors without number, horses, camels, powder and shot, what is required … all is ready. You need only to send your orders.

      Your true friend, Dayr

      DAYR AL FADIL, Bedouin Sheikh of the Anazeh, To Lady Hester Stanhope

      If you were a man, Hester, I would send you on the Continent with 60,000 men, and give you carte blanche and I am sure that not one of my plans would fail.

      WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER, Prime Minister of England

      The Arabs have never looked upon me in the light either of man or woman, but un être à part.

      HESTER LUCY STANHOPE

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Family Tree

Maps

Prologue

1 Beginnings

2 The Minority of One

3 The Company of Men

4 A Summoning of Strength

5 Love and Escape

       6 A Bolt-hole on the Bosphorus

       7 Indecision

       8 Friendships

       9 Under the Minaret

       10 The Desert Queen

       11 Separation and Despair

       12 ‘The Queen Orders Her Minister’

       13 A Chained-up Tigress

       14 ‘I Will Be No Man’s Agent’

       15 The Broken Statue

       16 Revenge

       17 ‘I Am Done With All Respectability’

       18 Mr Kocub’s Spy

       19 The Sun At Midnight

       20 Djoun

       21 The Mahdi’s Bride

       22 The Last Dance

       Epilogue

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       Notes

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Lady Hester Stanhope’s Family Tree

       Maps

       Prologue

      It was four o’clock on Sunday, 23 June 1839, the second year of Queen Victoria’s reign. Far away from England, on a hill in the shadow of Mount Lebanon, only the hum of cicadas stirred in the suffocating afternoon. The white stone walls and roofs of a house – as high and formidable as a small fortress – seemed to hover in the heat-distorted haze, above a handsome grove of olive trees. Round about there were other hills and ridges, crisscrossed with terraced fields, and gashes of that same chalky, porous stone. In the distance, bells pealed from the tower of a monastery; perhaps the only hint of what a European might recognize as kindred civilization. These hills were renowned as ancient cemeteries for the Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians, their warrens of tombs crammed with sarcophagi and hidden treasures invisible

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