Two hours before daybreak, Mâs, the negro, stood on the hill of ruins
with a donkey saddled and bridled. One of his hands grasped the tail of
the ass for insurance against braying; the other held a lantern, its rays
diverted from the house of Shems-ud-dìn. Mâs looked up at the stars with
a dissatisfied grunt. He observed in his soul:
“Now Allah correct all women! She whispers, ‘At the seventh hour be ready
for Alia’s sake,’ and I leave my couch and the comfort God sends to me
in dreams—the rich banquet and the palace of gurgling fountains, the
sweet brides, and my youth restored—I forsake all that, because of her
whispering, and I saddle the ass and take light in my hand, and stand out
here in the chill——”
A noise of cautious and uncertain footsteps here broke his reflections.
He stood intent to listen. All at once came the rattle of stones
displaced, a thud, a smothered scream. Promptly he turned the lantern so
as to throw light on the disaster.
A woman, closely veiled and muffled, rose slowly up from off a heap of
refuse.
“Is it thou, O Mâs? Praise to Allah! Say, what was it smote me that I
fell?”
“Come,” said Mâs simply.
Fatmeh tottered forward and clutched tight hold of the negro.
“O Mâs, I dare go no farther. Take thou this piece of raiment—the raiment
of the beloved—and go and hang it on the blessed tree.”
“Alone?” Mâs laughed to scorn the notion. “I love the dear one, but go
alone by night to a chosen haunt of devils, I will not! In the daytime
ask me.”
“Allah forbid! Is it not a secret for the dark to hide that thou sayest
‘in the daytime’? ‘The daytime!’ Allah, listen!”
“Since our lord gave thee leave to go, what is to hide?”
“Leave! Allah knows he has given leave enough. A sin, indeed, if recourse
might be had to Frankish wizards and not to that gentle tree!”
“Then come. We waste time.”
Seeing she would still have tarried, scolding, Mâs lifted her up and
placed her bodily upon the donkey’s back. Then taking the headrope in his
hand, he strode forward.
No sooner did Fatmeh recover breath than she began to inveigh against
all male creatures, but principally those on whom the wrath of God is
manifest in a black hide. Things, she declared, were come to a pretty
pass when a slave dared order the goings of his mistress, and carry her
whither she would not. But to all her tirades Mâs replied tranquilly:
“Since when art thou my lady? Thou art not all thou wouldst be.”
After a time words failed her. Only a moan, when some exceptional
roughness made her bump the pack saddle, assured Mâs that she was still
there behind him. At length she besought him, whimpering:
“O Mâs, speak to me; I am afraid. Tell me, O kind Mâs, a story to beguile
the way.”
“I know no story.”
“Sing then. For the love of Allah, sing a little.”
“I will not; for the jân love music. When the day comes, then perhaps I
will sing.”
Fatmeh appealed to Allah against such hardness of heart. She looked up
at the stars for comfort. But the folds of her veil obscured the view of
them, and when she looked down again the darkness seemed alive. Save the
clap of her donkey’s hoofs, there was no sound audible upon those unseen
hills. The ray from the lantern danced on ahead like an evil spirit.
All at once, to her horror, the dark earth yawned before her, spinning
dizzily to a shape, like clay upon the potter’s wheel. In a trice there
was a vast black bowl, in whose depths glowed fire, small specks that
grew and joined, dwindled, and grew again till all else vanished. She
lurched forward, groping for Mâs; but in the gloom her hands missed him,
and she fell to the ground.
When she came to herself again, she was dazzled by the light of the
lantern shining full in her eyes. Mâs bent over her, his black face
burnished in the light.
“Y’ Allah! What ails thee? Come, arise, I say.”
She moaned: “Woe on us! The fires! The fires of punishment!”
“Ah!” smiled Mâs, as seeing light at last. “There is a camp down there
in that wady—whether of the Bedû or the gypsies, Allah knows. Now come,
since thou art not dead.”
Again he lifted her on to the broad saddle. Again an impenetrable
darkness closed about them. But she was no more afraid. Having passed the
extreme of horror, whole by a miracle, all else that might befall seemed
light to bear.
A whiteness crept up somewhere behind the night. Soon, with the vagueness
and the ceaseless jogging, she fell asleep, and awoke to find herself in
a plain, somewhat cup-shaped, rimmed with jagged rocks. Something gaunt
and monstrous, which appeared writhing, yet was still, stood in the way
against them. It was the tree.
With a thankful heart she slid down from off the bruising saddle. She
took from her bosom the strip of Alia’s raiment and gave it to Mâs, who
was tall and could reach the branches.
“It is finished,” he said presently, with satisfaction.
Light increased with every minute. Mâs, having put out the lantern,
withdrew from her and went and knelt upon the ground, his left shoulder
toward the dawn. But Fatmeh, sitting huddled beneath the magic tree, knew
not, nor cared to know, what he was doing. She wept in repentance of her
great audacity.
She was aroused by a sound unexpected and terrible—the gallop of many
steeds. The noise drew near apace. A voice cried:
“Halt at the tree and rest.”
At that she flung herself face downward upon the ground and knew no more,
until a conversation arose so close to her that it was matter for wonder
how the speakers escaped contact with her body.
“It is a Bedawi, I say.”
“It is some beast.”
“Pronounce, O Nesìb the Thief, thou lord of two good eyes. What seest
thou?”
“I see nothing marvelous. Yonder is a man in white raiment, praying
toward Mekka. And here, not far distant, is a black donkey at grass,
bearing a pack saddle, but no load thereon.”
“Ha, ha! Is there light to tell black from white?”
“Others may not, but the Thief can surely.”
“The man is a Bedawi. Let us take his head with the others. So shall
my sons be avenged. Praise be to Allah! We know now that they go to El
Cûds, these dogs; and we go also to El Cûds. Are they not between our two
hands?... Yon wretch has finished his prayers. Let us slay him and reap
his head.... What kind of man is he? I cannot see for the light beyond.”
Fatmeh could bear it no longer. She screamed aloud in her alarm for Mâs.
Immediately she was seized and lifted, struggling, to her feet. Men
thronged upon her. She smelt men and horses.
They had pulled aside her veil, yet knew not who she was; not one of them
had seen her face before. Her knees gave way, her tongue clove to the
roof of her mouth. She could only moan and whimper under indignities,
and think with terror of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn. For disobedience this
shame was come upon her.
“Stop! Hold your hands!... O my lord Hassan, I beseech thee, let her go.
She is of the house of my master, the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn,” cried the
voice of a man out of breath—the voice of Mâs.
On the instant, as it seemed to her, she was free. She straightened her
veil, clutching for support at the saddle of the horse nearest to her.
But instead of the saddle her touch encountered the bristled skin of a
head—a man’s head. She gave one look ere her shriek went forth. There
were two of them, with bloated tongues protruding.
At her cries a laugh went up from the horsemen.
“Wilt ride with me?” asked Hassan Agha. “It falls not often to the lot
of woman to roll two men’s heads at once upon her knees. Have no fear,
my daughter. They shall not bite thee.... Nesìb and thou, Ali, stay and
guard these people. Be mindful to use them with respect for the sake of
the saintly Shems-ud-dìn, to whose house they belong. Allah be with you.”
He had risen in the act to spur his horse, when Fatmeh, repressing her
terror of the ghastly heads, caught his stirrup.
“O my lord!” she entreated, “of thy goodness breathe no word to the
sheykh, my master. He knows naught of my coming hither——”
Hassan cut short her prayer with a loud laugh.
“Then say nothing to thy lord of my two heads. Call it a bargain, O my
dear!”
And he rode off at speed with his men in the sun’s first rays.