MOTHER AND SON
Early on the morrow—so early that scarce had the Shehad been
recited—came Biskaine-el-Borak to the Basha. He had just landed from a
galley which had come upon a Spanish fishing boat, aboard of which
there was a young Morisco who was being conducted over seas to Algiers.
The news of which the fellow was the bearer was of such urgency that
for twenty hours without intermission the slaves had toiled at the oars
of Biskaine’s vessel—the capitana of his fleet—to bring her swiftly
home.
The Morisco had a cousin—a New-Christian like himself, and like
himself, it would appear, still a Muslim at heart—who was employed in
the Spanish treasury at Malaga. This man had knowledge that a galley
was fitting out for sea to convey to Naples the gold destined for the
pay of the Spanish troops in garrison there. Through parsimony this
treasure-galley was to be afforded no escort, but was under orders to
hug the coast of Europe, where she should be safe from all piratical
surprise. It was judged that she would be ready to put to sea in a
week, and the Morisco had set out at once to bring word of it to his
Algerine brethren that they might intercept and capture her.
Asad thanked the young Morisco for his news, bade him be housed and
cared for, and promised him a handsome share of the plunder should the
treasure-galley be captured. That done he sent for Sakr-el-Bahr, whilst
Marzak, who had been present at the interview, went with the tale of it
to his mother, and beheld her fling into a passion when he added that
it was Sakr-el-Bahr had been summoned that he might be entrusted with
this fresh expedition, thus proving that all her crafty innuendoes and
insistent warnings had been so much wasted labour.
With Marzak following at her heels, she swept like a fury into the
darkened room where Asad took his ease.
“What is this I hear, O my lord?” she cried, in tone and manner more
the European shrew than the submissive Eastern slave. “Is Sakr-el-Bahr
to go upon this expedition against the treasure-galley of Spain?”
Reclining on his divan he looked her up and down with a languid eye.
“Dost know of any better fitted to succeed?” quoth he.
“I know of one whom it is my lord’s duty to prefer to that foreign
adventurer. One who is entirely faithful and entirely to be trusted.
One who does not attempt to retain for himself a portion of the booty
garnered in the name of Islam.”
“Bah!” said Asad. “Wilt thou talk forever of those two slaves? And who
may be this paragon of thine?”
“Marzak,” she answered fiercely, flinging out an arm to drag forward
her son. “Is he to waste his youth here in softness and idleness? But
yesternight that ribald mocked him with his lack of scars. Shall he
take scars in the orchard of the Kasbah here? Is he to be content with
those that come from the scratch of a bramble, or is he to learn to be
a fighter and leader of the Children of the Faith that himself he may
follow in the path his father trod?”
“Whether he so follows,” said Asad, “is as the Sultan of Istambul, the
Sublime Portal, shall decree. We are but his vicegerents here.”
“But shall the Grand Sultan appoint him to succeed thee if thou hast
not equipped him so to do? I cry shame on thee, O father of Marzak, for
that thou art lacking in due pride in thine own son.”
“May Allah give me patience with thee! Have I not said that he is still
over young.”
“At his age thyself thou wert upon the seas, serving with the great
Ochiali.”
“At his age I was, by the favour of Allah, taller and stronger than is
he. I cherish him too dearly to let him go forth and perchance be lost
to me before his strength is full grown.”
“Look at him,” she commanded. “He is a man, Asad, and such a son as
another might take pride in. Is it not time he girt a scimitar about
his waist and trod the poop of one of thy galleys?”
“Indeed, indeed, O my father!” begged Marzak himself.
“What?” barked the old Moor. “And is it so? And wouldst thou go forth
then against the Spaniard? What knowledge hast thou that shall equip
thee for such a task?”
“What can his knowledge be since his father has never been concerned to
school him?” returned Fenzileh. “Dost thou sneer at shortcomings that
are the natural fruits of thine own omissions?”
“I will be patient with thee,” said Asad, showing every sign of losing
patience. “I will ask thee only if in thy judgment he is in case to win
a victory for Islam? Answer me straightly now.”
“Straightly I answer thee that he is not. And, as straightly, I tell
thee that it is full time he were. Thy duty is to let him go upon this
expedition that he may learn the trade that lies before him.”
Asad considered a moment. Then: “Be it so,” he answered slowly. “Shalt
set forth, then, with Sakr-el-Bahr, my son.”
“With Sakr-el-Bahr?” cried Fenzilch aghast.
“I could find him no better preceptor.”
“Shall thy son go forth as the servant of another?”
“As the pupil,” Asad amended. “What else?”
“Were I a man, O fountain of my soul,” said she, “and had I a son, none
but myself should be his preceptor. I should so mould and fashion him
that he should be another me. That, O my dear lord, is thy duty to
Marzak. Entrust not his training to another and to one whom despite thy
love for him I cannot trust. Go forth thyself upon this expedition with
Marzak here for thy kayia.”
Asad frowned. “I grow too old,” he said. “I have not been upon the seas
these two years past. Who can say that I may not have lost the art of
victory. No, no.” He shook his head, and his face grew overcast and
softened by wistfulness. “Sakr-el-Bahr commands this time, and if
Marzak goes, he goes with him.”
“My lord....” she began, then checked. A Nubian had entered to announce
that Sakr-el-Bahr was come and was awaiting the orders of his lord in
the courtyard. Asad rose instantly and for all that Fenzileh, greatly
daring as ever, would still have detained him, he shook her off
impatiently, and went out.
She watched his departure with anger in those dark lovely eyes of hers,
an anger that went near to filming them in tears, and after he had
passed out into the glaring sunshine beyond the door, a silence dwelt
in the cool darkened chamber—a silence disturbed only by distant trills
of silvery laughter from the lesser women of the Basha’s house. The
sound jarred her taut nerves. She moved with an oath and beat her hands
together. To answer her came a negress, lithe and muscular as a
wrestler and naked to the waist; the slave ring in her ear was of
massive gold.
“Bid them make an end of that screeching,” she snapped to vent some of
her fierce petulance. “Tell them I will have the rods to them if they
again disturb me.”
The negress went out, and silence followed, for those other lesser
ladies of the Basha’s hareem were more obedient to the commands of
Fenzileh than to those of the Basha himself.
Then she drew her son to the fretted lattice commanding the courtyard,
a screen from behind which they could see and hear all that passed out
yonder. Asad was speaking, informing Sakr-el-Bahr of what he had
learnt, and what there was to do.
“How soon canst thou put to sea again?” he ended
“As soon as the service of Allah and thyself require,” was the prompt
answer.
“It is well, my son.” Asad laid a hand, affectionately upon the
corsair’s shoulder, entirely conquered by this readiness. “Best set out
at sunrise to-morrow. Thou’lt need so long to make thee ready for the
sea.”
“Then by thy leave I go forthwith to give orders to prepare,” replied
Sakr-el-Bahr, for all that he was a little troubled in his mind by this
need to depart again so soon.
“What galleys shalt thou take?”
“To capture one galley of Spain? My own galeasse, no more; she will be
full equal to such an enterprise, and I shall be the better able, then,
to lurk and take cover—a thing which might well prove impossible with a
fleet.”
“Ay—thou art wise in thy daring,” Asad approved him. “May Allah prosper
thee upon the voyage.”
“Have I thy leave to go?”
“A moment yet. There is my son Marzak. He is approaching manhood, and
it is time he entered the service of Allah and the State. It is my
desire that he sail as thy lieutenant on this voyage, and that thou be
his preceptor even as I was thine of old.”
Now here was something that pleased Sakr-el-Bahr as little as it
pleased Marzak. Knowing the bitter enmity borne him by the son of
Fenzileh he had every cause to fear trouble if this project of Asad’s
were realized.
“As I was thine of old!” he answered with crafty wistfulness. “Wilt
thou not put to sea with us to-morrow, O Asad? There is none like thee
in all Islam, and what a joy were it not to stand beside thee on the
prow as of old when we grapple with the Spaniard.”
Asad considered him. “Dost thou, too, urge this?” quoth he.
“Have others urged it?” The man’s sharp wits, rendered still sharper by
his sufferings, were cutting deeply and swiftly into this matter. “They
did well, but none could have urged it more fervently than I, for none
knows so well as I the joy of battle against the infidel under thy
command and the glory of prevailing in thy sight. Come, then, my lord,
upon this enterprise, and be thyself thine own son’s preceptor since
’tis the highest honour thou canst bestow upon him.”
Thoughtfully Asad stroked his long white beard, his eagle eyes growing
narrow. “Thou temptest me, by Allah!”
“Let me do more....”
“Nay, more thou canst not. I am old and worn, and I am needed here.
Shall an old lion hunt a young gazelle? Peace, peace! The sun has set
upon my fighting day. Let the brood of fighters I have raised up keep
that which my arm conquered and maintain my name and the glory of the
Faith upon the seas.” He leaned upon Sakr-el-Bahr’s shoulder and
sighed, his eyes wistfully dreamy. “It were a fond adventure in good
truth. But no...I am resolved. Go thou and take Marzak with thee, and
bring him safely home again.”
“I should not return myself else,” was the answer. “But my trust is in
the All-knowing.”
Upon that he departed, dissembling his profound vexation both at the
voyage and the company, and went to bid Othmani make ready his great
galeasse, equipping it with carronades, three hundred slaves to row it,
and three hundred fighting men.
Asad-ed-Din returned to that darkened room in the Kasbah overlooking
the courtyard, where Fenzileh and Marzak still lingered. He went to
tell them that in compliance with the desires of both Marzak should go
forth to prove himself upon this expedition.
But where he had left impatience he found thinly veiled wrath
“O sun that warms me,” Fenzileh greeted him, and from long experience
he knew that the more endearing were her epithets the more vicious was
her mood, “do then my counsels weigh as naught with thee, are they but
as the dust upon thy shoes?”
“Less,” said Asad, provoked out of his habitual indulgence of her
licences of speech.
“That is the truth, indeed!” she cried, bowing her head, whilst behind
her the handsome face of her son was overcast.
“It is,” Asad agreed. “At dawn, Marzak, thou settest forth upon the
galeasse of Sakr-el-Bahr to take the seas under his tutelage and to
emulate the skill and valour that have rendered him the stoutest
bulwark of Islam, the very javelin of Allah.”
But Marzak felt that in this matter his mother was to be supported,
whilst his detestation of this adventurer who threatened to usurp the
place that should rightly be his own spurred him to mad lengths of
daring.
“When I take the seas with that dog-descended Nasrani,” he answered
hoarsely, “he shall be where rightly he belongs—at the rowers’ bench.”
“How?” It was a bellow of rage. Upon the word Asad swung to confront
his son, and his face, suddenly inflamed, was so cruel and evil in its
expression that it terrified that intriguing pair. “By the beard of the
Prophet! what words are these to me?” He advanced upon Marzak until
Fenzileh in sudden terror stepped between and faced him, like a lioness
springing to defend her cub. But the Basha, enraged now by this want of
submission in his son, enraged both against that son and the mother who
he knew had prompted him, caught her in his sinewy old hands, and flung
her furiously aside, so that she stumbled and fell in a panting heap
amid the cushions of her divan.
“The curse of Allah upon thee!” he screamed, and Marzak recoiled before
him. “Has this presumptuous hellcat who bore thee taught thee to stand
before my face, to tell me what thou wilt and wilt not do? By the
Koran! too long have I endured her evil foreign ways, and now it seems
she has taught thee how to tread them after her and how to beard thy
very father! To-morrow thou’lt take the sea with Sakr-el-Bahr, I have
said it. Another word and thou’lt go aboard his galeasse even as thou
saidst should be the case with him—at the rowers’ bench, to learn
submission under the slave master’s whip.”
Terrified, Marzak stood numb and silent, scarcely daring to draw
breath. Never in all his life had he seen his father in a rage so
royal. Yet it seemed to inspire no fear in Fenzileh, that congenital
shrew whose tongue not even the threat of rods or hooks could silence.
“I shall pray Allah to restore sight to thy soul, O father of Marzak,”
she panted, “to teach thee to discriminate between those that love thee
and the self-seekers that abuse thy trust.”
“How!” he roared at her. “Art not yet done?”
“Nor ever shall be until I am lain dumb in death for having counselled
thee out of my great love, O light of these poor eyes of mine.”
“Maintain this tone,” he said, with concentrated anger, “and that will
soon befall.”
“I care not so that the sleek mask be plucked from the face of that
dog-descended Sakr-el-Bahr. May Allah break his bones! What of those
slaves of his—those two from England, O Asad? I am told that one is a
woman, tall and of that white beauty which is the gift of Eblis to
these Northerners. What is his purpose with her—that he would not show
her in the suk as the law prescribes, but comes slinking here to beg
thee set aside the law for him? Ha! I talk in vain. I have shown thee
graver things to prove his vile disloyalty, and yet thou’lt fawn upon
him whilst thy fangs are bared to thine own son.”
He advanced upon her, stooped, caught her by the wrist, and heaved her
up.
His face showed grey under its deep tan. His aspect terrified her at
last and made an end of her reckless forward courage.
He raised his voice to call.
“Ya anta! Ayoub!”
She gasped, livid in her turn with sudden terror. “My lord, my lord!”
she whimpered. “Stream of my life, be not angry! What wilt thou do?”
He smiled evilly. “Do?” he growled. “What I should have done ten years
ago and more. We’ll have the rods to thee.” And again he called, more
insistently—“Ayoub!”
“My lord, my lord!” she gasped in shuddering horror now that at last
she found him set upon the thing to which so often she had dared him.
“Pity! Pity!” She grovelled and embraced his knees. “In the name of the
Pitying the Pitiful be merciful upon the excesses to which my love for
thee may have driven this poor tongue of mine. O my sweet lord! O
father of Marzak!”
Her distress, her beauty, and perhaps, more than either, her unusual
humility and submission may have moved him. For even as at that moment
Ayoub—the sleek and portly eunuch, who was her wazeer and
chamberlain—loomed in the inner doorway, salaaming, he vanished again
upon the instant, dismissed by a peremptory wave of the Basha’s hand.
Asad looked down upon her, sneering. “That attitude becomes thee best,”
he said. “Continue it in future.” Contemptuously he shook himself free
of her grasp, turned and stalked majestically out, wearing his anger
like a royal mantle, and leaving behind him two terror-shaken beings,
who felt as if they had looked over the very edge of death.
There was a long silence between them. Then at long length Fenzileh
rose and crossed to the meshra-biyah—the latticed window-box. She
opened it and took from one of its shelves an earthenware jar, placed
there so as to receive the slightest breeze. From it she poured water
into a little cup and drank greedily. That she could perform this
menial service for herself when a mere clapping of hands would have
brought slaves to minister to her need betrayed something of her
disordered state of mind.
She slammed the inner lattice and turned to Marzak. “And now?” quoth
she.
“Now?” said the lad.
“Ay, what now? What are we to do? Are we to lie crushed under his rage
until we are ruined indeed? He is bewitched. That jackal has enchanted
him, so that he must deem well done all that is done by him. Allah
guide us here, Marzak, or thou’lt be trampled into dust by
Sakr-el-Bahr.”
Marzak hung his head; slowly he moved to the divan and flung himself
down upon its pillows; there he lay prone, his hands cupping his chin,
his heels in the air.
“What can I do?” he asked at last.
“That is what I most desire to know. Something must be done, and soon.
May his bones rot! If he lives thou art destroyed.”
“Ay,” said Marzak, with sudden vigour and significance. “If he lives!”
And he sat up. “Whilst we plan and plot, and our plans and plots come
to naught save to provoke the anger of my father, we might be better
employed in taking the shorter way.”
She stood in the middle of the chamber, pondering him with gloomy eyes
“I too have thought of that,” said she. “I could hire me men to do the
thing for a handful of gold. But the risk of it....”
“Where would be the risk once he is dead?”
“He might pull us down with him, and then what would our profit be in
his death? Thy father would avenge him terribly.”
“If it were craftily done we should not be discovered.”
“Not be discovered?” she echoed, and laughed without mirth. “How young
and blind thou art, O Marzak! We should be the first to be suspected. I
have made no secret of my hate of him, and the people do not love me.
They would urge thy father to do justice even were he himself averse to
it, which I will not credit would be the case. This Sakr-el-Bahr—may
Allah wither him!—is a god in their eyes. Bethink thee of the welcome
given him! What Basha returning in triumph was ever greeted by the
like? These victories that fortune has vouchsafed him have made them
account him divinely favoured and protected. I tell thee, Marzak, that
did thy father die to-morrow Sakr-el-Bahr would be proclaimed Basha of
Algiers in his stead, and woe betide us then. And Asad-ed-Din grows
old. True, he does not go forth to fight. He clings to life and may
last long. But if he should not, and if Sakr-el-Bahr should still walk
the earth when thy father’s destiny is fulfilled, I dare not think what
then will be thy fate and mine.”
“May his grave be defiled!” growled Matzak.
“His grave?” said she. “The difficulty is to dig it for him without
hurt to ourselves. Shaitan protects the dog.”
“May he make his bed in hell!” said Marzak.
“To curse him will not help us. Up, Marzak, and consider how the thing
is to be done.”
Marzak came to his feet, nimble and supple as a greyhound. “Listen
now,” he said. “Since I must go this voyage with him, perchance upon
the seas on some dark night opportunity may serve me.”
“Wait! Let me consider it. Allah guide me to find some way!” She beat
her hands together and bade the slave girl who answered her to summon
her wazeer Ayoub, and bid a litter be prepared for her. “We’ll to the
sôk, O Marzak, and see these slaves of his. Who knows but that
something may be done by means of them! Guile will serve us better than
mere strength against that misbegotten son of shame.”
“May his house be destroyed!” said Marzak.