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ZARAH THE CRUEL
* * * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
DESERT LOVE
LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE
THE HAWK OF EGYPT
* * * * * *
ZARAH THE CRUEL
by
JOAN CONQUEST
Author of “Desert Love,” “Leonie of the Jungle,”
“The Hawk of Egypt.”
New York
The Macaulay Company
Copyright, 1923, by
The Macaulay Company
Printed in the U. S. A.
TO
BETTY C—— OF C——
TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR
SO MUCH OF THIS BOOK
ZARAH THE CRUEL
PROLOGUE
“_Narrower than the ear of a needle._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
The Holy Man, motionless, gaunt, his eyes filled with the peace of Allah,
the one and only God, stood afar off, outlined against the moonlight,
watching two horsemen fleeing for their lives across the desert.
Pursued by a band of Arabs which hunted them for murder done in the far,
fair City of Damascus and had hunted them throughout the Peninsula,
they headed for the Mountains of Death towering in the limitless sands
of the burning desert and cut off from the world by the silvery belt of
quicksands which surround them completely.
Uninhabited by beast or human being within the memory of man and the
memory of his fathers, and his fathers’ fathers, yet did the wandering
story-teller, as he flitted from town to village, from Bedouin camp to
verdant oasis, make song or story of the legend which has clung to the
pile of volcanic rock throughout the centuries.
A story which either moved the listener to shouts of derisive,
unbelieving laughter or held him still, lost in wonderment and dreams.
A legend recounted in this day of grace by the Arabian story-teller to
Bedouins, sitting entranced under the stars or the moon, yet which had
been inscribed upon a highly decorated vellum by the Holy Palladius in
the fifth century of our Lord, which record of early holy church was
lost in the burning and sacking of a famous library in the more Christian
times of the last ten turbulent years.
The story of a miraculous light, which, so read the vellum, led the Holy
Fathers across the sands of death, over which they did most safely pass,
to find within the mountains the further miracle of fresh, sparkling
water, palm groves of luscious _kholas_ dates, stretches of _durra_ and
grass, coarse enough to be woven into shirts, with which to replace, in
the passing of the years, the shirts of hair which covered the attenuated
bodies of the thirty-odd early Christian Fathers.
There, within the secret oasis, so went the legend, the holy men who
fled the temptations and persecutions of the world and sought safety and
salvation in penance and pilgrimage, built a monastery to the glory of
God, and there, so it was to be supposed, they must have died, with the
exception of one, who, following the casting of lots, had been sent forth
from the miraculous oasis upon a mission to acquaint the Holy Palladius
of the community’s whereabouts.
The vellum had witnessed the Holy Father’s safe arrival at his journey’s
end, but of his return to the Sanctuary, as was the poetical name given
the place by the renowned Palladius, there had been no mention.
A fair legend to endure throughout the passing of the centuries, a sweet
story in a land of thirst and death and dire privation, a tantalizing
word-picture to those who knew the shifting sands to be impassable.
The Holy Man pondered upon the legend as he watched the horsemen tearing
towards the quicksands and certain death, then, with the beads of Mecca
slipping between his fingers, turned and continued his pilgrimage due
south, the south where the wind blows hottest and the sands burn the
sandal from off even holy feet.
And Mohammed-Abd, accused of the murder of a wealthy, flint-hearted
usurer in the fair, far City of Damascus, turned to the handsome youth
who, loving him as a brother, had helped him to escape, so far, from the
vengeance of the flint-hearted usurer’s relatives.
“The mare faileth, Boy of the Wondrous Eyes! I fear a spear or a bullet
shall find its home in her body, or in mine, before she reaches yonder
mass of rocks.”
Yussuf laughed and turned in his seat and looked back, shading the
beautiful, almond-shaped, long-lashed eyes which had earned him his
nickname and had got him into more trouble even than usually befalls a
handsome youth in the Arabian Peninsula.
“There is the length of many spears yet between us, brother. Lie upon
the neck of Lulah, the mare, so that the wind of her great speed be not
counted against her. The swiftest mare in all Nejd, yet in endurance of
but little count. Behold is there a light at the foot of the mountains
moving this way and that way? Perchance ’tis one who lives amongst the
rocks and who watches with intent to succour us. Allah be praised that
the sands lie flat under our horses’ feet, though by the wool! would He
be thrice praised if, in His mercy and compassion, He were to twist the
feet of the horses which follow us and so break their riders’ necks.”
The mountains seemed within spear-length, the quicksands showed one with
the desert, silvery, smooth, when the mare stumbled just as a bullet
whistled past, singeing the streaming mane.
She was up on her dainty, unshod feet upon the instant, racing for safety
with the last effort of her gallant heart, when Mohammed-Abd turned and
yelled defiance at his pursuers.
“_Ista’jil!_” he yelled, “_Ista’jil!_”
Everyday words, which merely mean “make haste,” but destined to become a
battle cry which, in after years, struck terror in the hearts of those
who heard it, from Oman to Hajaz.
In reply came a volley of firing, mixed with derisive and insulting
words, lost in the din of shouting and hoofs upon the sand.
“Follow me, brother!” shouted Yussuf, as he pressed his mare with his
knees.
Ahead a greenish light danced this way and that, backwards and forwards,
and to it Yussuf rode his mare, with Mohammed-Abd close upon his heels.
They followed the will-o’-the-wispish light formed by the gas floating
above the quicksands, mixing with the wind when it blew from the south,
and fled upon the narrow path over which it danced. A path formed
perchance by the top of some mountain chain thrusting through the desert;
hidden throughout the centuries by the inch or so, not more, of sand
which overlapped it from the treacherous, seething, ever-moving sea of
death; a way to safety discovered to the Holy Fathers and the fugitives
before the law by Allah the merciful, the one and only God.
Over it they passed safely, with, if they had but known it, barely the
breadth of a hand to spare, upon either side of the exhausted mare; they
slipped from the saddle and pulled the panting beasts back into the
shadows just as, with much triumphant shouting and firing of rifles, the
pursuing Arabs, riding in a straight line, plunged, yelling, screaming,
down into the quicksands’ suffocating depths.
The miracle of the fifth century had been explained at last.
An hour later, when the stars shone down upon a scene of perfect peace,
Yussuf laughed and pulled at the spear hurled by an Arab in one last
effort of revenge before sinking to his death.
It did not move. Stuck fast between two rocks it remained for all time, a
sign to mark the commencement of the only means of communication between
the Sanctuary and the pitiless, burning desert.
“Methinks we are no better off, brother. If, by the grace of Allah, we
find again the hidden path by which we crossed this sea of death, yet
have we neither drop of water nor date-stone left with which to stifle
the pangs of hunger and thirst, of which we surely die if we move not
from this ledge of rock.”
He looked up to the top width of a great V which cleft the mountains
half-way down the side, and from the narrowest point of which there
seemed to stretch a path to where the spear marked the beginning of the
secret path.
Then he stretched his hand and touched the rock behind the spear, and
with finger upon cracked lips softly called Mohammed-Abd, who came
quickly upon tiptoe.
“Let us go warily, brother, yet let us go in search of those who inhabit
the heart of the mountains, so that they help us in our need.”
They passed their fingers over the rough cross hacked in the rock as a
sign of his return by the Christian who, in the fifth century, had been
sent upon a mission to the Holy Palladius; then, hobbling the mares,
crept in the shadows from rock to rock, up the path leading to the
narrowest point of the great cleft, which made the one opening in the
mountains, slitting them to a spot midway between the foot and crest.
Famished and almost crazed with thirst, the two men hid in blackest
shadow, listening for a sound, peering for a sight of those who had
marked the way up with rough crosses cut upon the rocks; then, alert,
apprehensive, stopping to listen at every yard, crept noiselessly to the
opening of the cleft. Through it they passed like shadows, and on down
a steeper, broader path to a great plateau, on the edge of which they
stopped, staring in amazement.
“A mirage!” whispered Mohammed-Abd in hoarse tones, then, crouching, ran
across the plateau and fell upon his knees and to his full length upon
the bank of a sparkling, rushing river.
Whence came the unknown, miraculous water? It flowed from the eastern
side of the mountains; it twisted in the shape of a big S in the middle
of the fertile plain; it disappeared through a narrow cleft in the
western side with the thundering, rushing sound of water falling into
space.
The waters of the Wadi Hanifa which flow through Woshim and Ared more or
less abundantly, according to the season, have so far not been traced
after they disappear in the fertile district of Yemama. Do they flow
below the surface to the Persian Gulf? or on into the terrible desert,
to be absorbed in the ever greedy sand? Are these the waters which show
above ground for a few blessed yards in the secret heart of the Mountains
of Death, cut off by the quicksands from the needy sons of the desert who
depend upon the scanty, brackish water of deep wells, and vapours carried
uncertainly on certain winds from the Persian Gulf, and which are lost
once they pass above the _hamads_, those red-hot, dust-laden, scorching,
terrible limestone plains?
Or does a subterranean river flow through the bowels of some chain of
mountains stretching below the surface of the Peninsula from sea to sea,
wrapped in the desert sand?
Maybe!
And may not the short mountain ranges dotted throughout Arabia’s deserts
be the topmost peaks of that great hidden chain, and the miraculous
waters hidden in the Mountains of Death be part of that lost river,
escaping through its prison walls in the one spot where the rocks have
been worn, during the centuries, by the rush and the fret of the waters
below and the wind and the storm above?
Fantastic theory. And yet who knows? Who will ever know?
But there it is, and doubtlessly there it always will be, forming an
inaccessible oasis, with sweet water and groves of date palms, and
stretches of wheat and barley descended from the grain sown from the
Holy Fathers’ scanty store centuries ago; a quiet spot, with cotton
shrubs and vines, coffee plants and _durra_, climbing gentle slopes
covered in rich, coarse grass, and herbs and flowers of every kind which
spring from the seeds blown upon the wind or carried by the birds which
swarm where water is to be found.
“No mirage, brother,” whispered Yussuf. “Yet must we go warily, with eyes
in our heads and hands upon our weapons, for methinks the inhabitants
hide and spy upon us from the rocks, waiting the fortunate moment to fall
upon us.”
He passed his hand over the first of a short flight of steps leading
down to the water and worn smooth by the passage of holy feet. “By the
marks upon the steps there is much going and coming, and a good harvest
about us. Food for the eating and for the drinking, water, the beverage
prescribed for man by Mohammed the prophet of Allah, the one and only
God.” He touched the amulet of good luck which hung about his neck and
lay quite still, his hand upon his friend’s arm, looking about him
in the shadows and up at the birds of all sizes which, disturbed by
the intrusion, flew distractedly in every direction. “Stay thou here,
brother. I will drink a while, then will I go and fetch thee dates, and
if I meet the inhabitants of this corner of Paradise, set in the midst of
suffering, will ask of them hospitality—if they be friendly—or the way
back across the hidden path by which we entered if they prove otherwise,
quickening their tongues, if there be hesitation, with this.”
He loosened the broad, crooked dagger in his cummerbund, and, descending
the rough steps, threw himself down to drink until he came wellnigh
to bursting. Replete, he rose and walked apart some feet and looked
around him and stood amazed, overcome by a strange awe, then, beckoning
Mohammed-Abd who drank at the river’s edge, crept like a shadow across
the plateau and up a steep flight of steps made by the laying of
boulders one upon the other.
The ruins of the monastery, which had been hidden from the fugitives by a
great mass of jutting rock which swept down almost to the water’s edge,
lay silent, forsaken, upon the natural terraces of the mountainside. In
the strong black-and-white shadow and moonlight the rough walls showed
no sign of the devastating hand of time, and hid the remains of roofs
which, from want of repair, had at last caved in and fallen upon the
rock floors. The windows of the cells, thirty in all, showed like black
patches painted upon a grey background; thirty doorways gaped desolate;
the dust of ages covered stones worn by the passing to and fro of bare
feet, some more, some less, according to the span of years allotted to
each holy man.
How had the holy men worked? How had they built to the glory of God with
no other implements than their hands and the strength of their muscles
and their vows?
The walls of the cells, the chapel and the refectory were two feet thick
and built of pieces of granite of various sizes, fitted together in
rough, mosaic fashion; they had stood throughout the centuries just as
they had been put together, without loss of a single stone, just as the
trunks of palms, rough-hewn by patience and sharpened stones, had stood,
in ones or in columns, to support the roofs composed of other trunks of
palms, laid crosswise and covered in laced leaves.
Later was discovered a place, high upon the mountainside, to the edge
of which boulders, both great and small, had evidently been pushed and
hurled to the rocks below, to be smashed to bits, out of which bits
doubtlessly had been picked the pieces necessary to the task of building.
How many years had it taken to build the chapel? How much strength to
carry the square slab, which had formed the altar, up the mountainside
and to prop it upon four supports? How much patience to build up the
pointed _façade_ and to pluck out the stones from the middle until a
clear cross, formed by space, showed against the blazing sky or the
star-studded velvet of the night?
Why had they built? For joy? For penance? The latter probably, for the
buildings, which spread terrace above terrace, must have far outreached
the need of the holy men.
For many minutes Yussuf stood staring up at this mystery of the desert,
and then, slowly, step by step, pulled by the strength of the unknown,
halting to listen, hastening to gain the shadows, climbed the rough steps
and reached the chapel door.
He stood staring down at the floor littered with stones and across to the
altar, before which lay a skull, gleaming in a shaft of moonlight. Making
the sign to scare away evil spirits, he stepped across the holy place,
though not for a king’s ransom would he have touched the white bones of
Father Augustine, the last of the holy men, who had laid himself down to
die before the altar, upon which had been roughly chipped a cross.
“Christians!” whispered Yussuf, slipping the rosary of Mecca between his
fingers. “Infidels!”
Like a great cat he crept out of the place and up the steps leading to
the thirty cells, where, upon the stone floors, showed the marks made
by the holy men who had fled the world and the luxury of soft beds. He
climbed yet twelve steps more to the refectory, where thirty stones, more
or less flat, stood in the circle the holy men had formed for meals or
recreation; and up again to other buildings, both great and small, built
to what purpose it will never be known; then fled the silent, deserted
place, slipping, stumbling down the steps to the plateau, where waited
his friend.
Side by side, warily, noiselessly, they climbed to the tombs, high
up upon the western flank, natural caves, upon the floors of which
twenty-nine holy men slept the long sleep, each underneath a mound of
stone.
They lay there now, for all that is known, waiting for the last trump to
call them back across the quicksands of time.
They sleep peacefully, undisturbed, for ruthless, savage as were the
men who ultimately threw in their lot with Mohammed-Abd, criminals and
outlaws every one, from every province and every tribe in the Peninsula,
yet they respected the solemnity of that Christian burial ground and left
the sleeping forms in peace.
And just as the first sunbeam slid over the mountaintops, filling the
rocky bowl with golden light, the two men adopted the place as home.
An impregnable stronghold; a natural fortress in a waste place; a land of
dates and water, upon which a man or many men could subsist for lack of
better or more tasty nutriment; a citadel surrounded by a sea of death,
yet connected with _terra firma_ by a path of rock, which as a foundation
cannot be bettered.
“ ... for if we have safely followed in the path of the thirty who sleep
yonder,” argued Mohammed-Abd, looking up to the tombs in the rocks bathed
in the glory of the sunrise; “why should not yet another thirty, fleeing
before the law, and even thrice times thirty, come safely through the
hungry sands? If two horses escaped the death, why should not two camels,
with their feet as big and soft as the heart of one who leans unduly
to the affections, cross that path, and, with violent lamentations and
much urging, make their way down yon rocky road? And if two, why should
not thirty of their brothers and sisters follow as safely, with thirty
Nejdeen stallions and mares, as nimble as goats upon their dainty feet,
behind them? And are we so weak that we could not carry sheep and goats,
in young, across our saddle bows, so that they multiply in this place of
plenty?” He looked up and around, stretching wide his arms. “Is there not
place for man and beast and many of each? And are we not, O my brother,
bidden by the Great Prophet to succour those in distress, are we not?”
In such-wise did Mohammed-Abd, the ambitious outlaw, with Yussuf as his
right hand, become the head of as daring a gang of brigands as had ever
swept the highways of the desert.
And all went well with him, his harvests yielding abundantly, his wealth
accumulating, his people and cattle waxing fat and multiplying throughout
the years, until he took unto himself a wife, who died on bearing him a
daughter.
CHAPTER I
“_From the afternoon it will appear if the night will be
clear._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
Zarah the Cruel leaned on the wall which surrounded the chapel of the
monastery, built by early Christians in the fifth century, and looked
down at two dogs fighting upon the plateau near the water’s edge.
Twenty years had passed since Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, so called by his men,
who adored him, had adopted the natural stronghold in a desert waste
as home, naming it the Sanctuary, unwitting that he poached upon the
poetical tendencies of the long dead Holy Palladius; fifteen years since
he had taken to wife Mercedes, the beautiful Spaniard, the arrogant
daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee, who, made prisoner as she
journeyed on business bent across the Arabian Peninsula in the company
of her high-born and feckless father, had condescended to marry the
notorious robber-sheikh in exchange for the liberty of her progenitor and
the safe conduct of himself and his retinue out of the country. She had
condescended to marry him, but in the secret places of her passionate,
adventurous heart she had come most truly to love him, so that the years
preceding the birth of their daughter had been years of happiness; years
in which, although the raids upon caravans and peoples had been as fierce
and bloody as before, the lot of the prisoners had been considerably
lightened, until those who had not the wherewithal to pay the ransom
demanded had come to sing as they set about their tasks of herding
cattle, tending harvests, or working to strengthen and beautify the ruins
upon the mountainside. Those who had the means, or friends altruistic
enough to raise the ransom, had paid it and taken their departure with a
distinct feeling of regret in their hearts.
Many had thrown in their lot with the outlawed chief, whilst the
physically undesirable had been liberated at once and sent packing on the
homeward track, so that harmony had reigned in the strange place and the
welfare of the brotherhood had increased a hundredfold.
Three years later Mercedes died, leaving in her stead a woman-child,
upon whom the Sheikh poured out the adoration of his stricken heart. A
strange, quiet woman-child, who had neither cried nor laughed as she had
lain in her father’s arms, staring past him out of tawny, opalescent eyes.
And as she grew, beautiful, cruel, and as relentless as the desert to
which she belonged, so did unrest and fear and passion grow in the
erstwhile happy community, until women ran and seized their children so
that her shadow should not fall upon them, prisoners shrank at sight or
sound of her, and the men, hating her in their hearts yet hypnotized by
her beauty and her great daring, whispered amongst themselves as they
questioned the one, the other, as to the next whim or new punishment her
ungovernable temperament would invent.
For an Arabian she was well educated. Vain as a peacock, she forced
herself, loathing it the while, to take advantage of every opportunity of
learning which presented itself, solely with the object of shining before
the men, who, with, the exception of one nicknamed the Patriarch, were as
illiterate as most Arabs are.
A learned Armenian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman, made prisoners through
an injudicious display of wealth, had each had the sentence of heavy
ransom commuted to that of two years’ instruction to the Sheikh’s almost
ungovernable daughter.
The Jew had taught her to read and to write whilst thoroughly
appreciating his robber-host’s hearty hospitality; the Spaniard had
taught her his language and the dances of his country whilst enjoying
the wild life he had led between lessons; the Frenchman had taught her
his language and the use of the foils, and had asked for her hand in
marriage, to be thoroughly surprised at a blunt refusal.
She read everything she could get hold of, lining the reconstructed
walls of two cells, which had once echoed the prayers and witnessed the
austerities of the holy monks, with books brought by caravan from the
port of Jiddah. She could eat quite nicely with a knife and fork and
manipulate a finger napkin with some dexterity, but showed a preference
for her fingers—which she wiped upon the carpet or by digging them into
the hot sand—and her splendid white teeth for the process of separating
meat from bone.
From her father she undoubtedly came by her magnificent horsemanship and
surpassing skill in the use of weapons of self-defence.
He delighted in her physical training, spending hours with her either in
a room which had been fitted up as a gymnasium after the counselling of
the Frenchman; or on the plateau, pitting her skill with spear, rifle
and revolver against that of youths of her own age; or away in the
desert riding with the magnificent horses for which he had become famous
throughout the Peninsula.
Trained to a hair, with a ripple of muscle under the velvety, creamy
skin which the sun barely bronzed, she could, at last, throw an unbroken
horse with any of her father’s followers, or ride it bare-back out into
the mystery of the terrible desert, heedless of its efforts to dismount
her, driving it farther and farther with little golden spurs until, with
its pride shattered and its heart almost broken, she would race it back,
utterly spent, to the shade of the mountains.
She joined the enthusiastic men in the sports they got up amongst
themselves to pass the monotony of leisure hours, or hunted with them for
the sheer joy of killing, laughing with delight when she brought down
ostrich or gazelle, firing at carrion for the sole purpose of keeping her
hand in, leaving the birds to die where they fell.
Born and bred in the heat of the tropics, which hastens the physical
development of both sexes in the Eastern races, she was almost full grown
upon her twelfth birthday. She inherited the beauty of her mother, save
for the colour of her hair, which rioted over her head in short curls and
flamed like the setting sun, and the colour of her eyes, which shone like
a topaz in the moonlight or as the storm-whipped desert, according to the
violence or moderation of her mood. Through the Andalusian strain in her
mixed blood she had come by her perfect hands and feet and teeth, and to
the same source was she a thousand times indebted for the grace of her
movements and gait and the assurance of her pose.
Her father’s tenacity was abnormally developed in her. It had helped him
to cling to life in the first turbulent years in the desolate Sanctuary;
it helped her to beat down his almost indomitable will over matters both
great and small, until, save for an occasional outburst of authority, he
was as wax in her slender hands. Of his great-heartedness, his charity
towards the needy—for whom he so often robbed the wealthy, with much
violence and bloodshed—his justice and understanding, she had not one
particle in her heart of stone, as she had not a glimmer of the humour
and tenderness which had served to balance her mother’s arrogance and
passionate nature.
In her, the crossing of the races, exaggerating the defects, minimizing
the merits of her parentage, had resulted in a terrible streak of cruelty
which roused a fierce hatred in heart of man and beast.
Virile, ambitious, relentless, she was cursed from birth by the strength
of her dual nationality.
Driven, beaten, horses did her bidding, but had never been known to
answer to her call; dogs hated her instinctively, but feared her not one
bit; her arm still showed, would always show, the marks of Rādi’s teeth
when, from an incredible distance, the greyhound bitch leapt upon her to
revenge the death, by drowning, of one pup which had angered the girl by
its continual whimpering. For her life she dared not visit the kennels
unattended.
She had tried, but had failed to bring about the fall of Yussuf of the
Wondrous Eyes, who loved the Sheikh as a brother, and would have laid
down his life for him if he had so desired.
She hated him for his beauty, for his indifference towards her, for
the love he inspired in animals—Rādi, the famous greyhound; Lulah, the
fastest mare; Fahm, the priceless dromedary, were all his.
Allah! how she hated him!
He responded to her hate with a hate transcending that of his own dog,
the maddened bitch; he had hated her blindly from the very beginning—for
causing the death of the woman who had brought such happiness to his
friend; for usurping her place and his place in the Sheikh’s heart;
for her cruelty, her tyranny, her utter disregard of the happiness and
welfare of others.
He set himself to thwart the child in every possible way and upon every
possible occasion—craftily, so that none should point to him as the
author of the contretemps which so strangely and so frequently befell her.
From the day she could understand until the dawn of her tenth birthday
misfortune after misfortune fell upon her, until those who met her,
covertly made the gesture, used all the world over, to avert the evil
eye; whilst the Sheikh tore his beard in secret as he tried to elucidate
the mysteries of the dead mare, the broken spears, the disappearance,
almost within sight of the Sanctuary, of an entire caravan laden with
gifts for her, and other calamities which had befallen his offspring, in
whom, blinded as unfortunately are so many doting parents, he saw no
fault.
But when the sun rose on the anniversary of Zarah’s tenth year of life,
Yussuf’s hate, as is the wont of unbridled passions, turned back upon
him, whilst tragedy followed close upon his heel as he wended his way to
the Hall of Judgment by one of the many paths he had made, in his love
of solitude, amongst the rocks. Mohammed-Abd looked up at the handsome
face and smiled into the wondrous eyes which looked down into his in such
splendid friendliness and bade him sit beside him on the carpet, upon
which were spread gifts of gold and silver, ivory and glass and silk, to
celebrate the festival.
“Zarah would ride thy mare Lulah in the _gazu_ this night, little
brother. Behold would she be well mounted when gaining the title of
_Hadeeyah_ by leading the men to the attack, even as did Ayesha, the wife
of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, the one and only God.”
“She would ride Lulah?” replied Yussuf slowly, ignoring the girl
entirely, intentionally, so as to rouse her anger. “Lulah, descendant of
the mare that brought thee safely across the path so many moons ago?”
As it happened, Zarah did not mind if she rode mare or stallion in her
first raid upon a caravan which had been reported as travelling, heavily
laden, towards Hutah.
Foiled, up to that very moment, in all her efforts to break or bend the
man she hated with all her heart, she was making one last effort to
triumph over him.
Incapable of understanding the friendship between the men,
under-estimating Yussuf’s strength of character, believing, in her
colossal vanity, that he was merely the victim of a petty jealousy roused
by her beauty and her power over the Sheikh, she had decided to make her
request before her father upon a day when, so she thought, no one would
dare refuse her anything.
“Yea! little brother,” replied Mohammed-Abd, “the fastest mare in all
Arabia!”
Knowing nothing whatever about fortune telling, and merely to plague the
girl, Yussuf, slowly and with an irritating nonchalance, drew certain
signs upon the floor, then spoke, as Fate, who held the strings by which
they were hobbled to their destinies, dictated.
“I see Lulah flying across the desert sands,” he whispered, “at dawn,
with death upon her back. She flees for her life, with hate, revenge,
hard upon her heels. She stumbles, there is ... nay! I see no more. ’Tis
hidden in the mists of time. But death, death with a crown of red above
her snow-white face, rode her, with hate upon her heels.”
He looked across at Zarah, who, ridden with superstition, and totally
unaware that he was fooling her, leant far back upon her cushions, one
hand extended, with fingers spread against disaster, the other clutching
an amulet of good luck hanging about her neck.
He smiled at her terror and shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands,
palm uppermost, as though to protest against such signs of weakness. The
action, the look in the wonderful eyes, acted as a spur upon the girl,
goading her to maddest wrath. With a mighty effort she controlled herself
and leaned far forward, eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of
hate.
“What has death to do with me?” she cried. “Verily dost thou croak like a
bird of prey. I say that I will ride Lulah, the black mare, _thy_ mare,
as far as anything in the Sanctuary can be thine, who art but a servant.
Hearest thou? I ride Lulah, the black mare!”
“Behold! have I ears to hear thy words, and eyes to see thy face
distorted in anger! Yet I say that thou shalt _not_ ride the mare.”
The men who sat in the body of the hall smoking or drinking coffee whilst
listening to the dispute, nudged each other at the sudden, tense silence
which fell between the two.
“A golden piece, Bowlegs, to the dagger in thy belt that trouble befalls
before the coffee grows cold within the cups,” whispered the Patriarch,
whose benign exterior covered a heart given entirely to gambling.
Bowlegs, who had gained his unpoetical sobriquet on account of his lower
limbs, which had become almost circular through his infantile desire
to run before he could crawl, laid his dagger on the carpet beside the
golden piece.
“Nay! Not to-day. Fall the trouble will between the two who love each
other as love the cat and dog, but not upon the tiger-cub’s day of
festival—hist—she speaks.”
“And why shall I not ride the black mare?”
Zarah spoke slowly, clearly, whilst the Sheikh looked from the one to the
other in grief and anxiety.
“Because she is in foal!”
It was a lie, the girl knew it was a lie, the Sheikh knew it was a lie,
as he leaned forward and tried to catch her hand.
He was too late.
“Liar!” she screamed. “Accursed liar!” she screamed again, as she seized
a heavy, cut-glass bowl and hurled it in Yussuf’s face, against which
it smashed to pieces, cutting it to ribbons, a thousand needle-pointed
splinters of glass putting out for ever the light of the wondrous eyes.
* * * * *
“_The box went in search of the lid until it met with
it._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
The mistaken love of friends saved him, though would it have been far
kinder to have let him close his blinded eyes in the last long sleep,
from which he would perchance have wakened with a clearer vision and a
better understanding.
“The will of Allah? Does our brother live or die? Speak quickly lest I
pinch thy windpipe ’twixt thumb and finger.”
Some many days later the renowned herbalist procured from Hutah, in
the Hareek Oasis, by the simple process of kidnapping, and brought,
blindfolded, by swiftest camel to the curing of the sick man, looked up
at Al-Asad, the gigantic Nubian.
“He lives,” replied the wizened old man, gently removing the Nubian’s
slender fingers from about his scraggy throat. “But would have died long
ere my advent if it had not been for the tender ministrations of yon
woman Namlah and her son, smitten with dumbness.”
Al-Asad nodded as he looked to where Namlah, the busy, who had tended the
sick man day and night, stretched out pieces of soft white muslin to dry,
with the help of her son.
“Aye, verily has she a heart made for mothering. Two apples has she, one
for each eye. Two sons, though which one she loves the most we do not
know. The one who is gifted with speech and is slow of wit, or the dumb
one with a mind like yonder sparkling water? Hey! Namlah! thou busy ant,
wilt give thy boy to the herbalist so that he acquires much learning in
medicine?”
Namlah clutched her dumb boy to her heart.
“I will kill him, or her, who takes one of mine from me!” she shrilled,
taking off the amulet of good luck from about her own neck to hang it
round her son’s. “The jewels, the fair name, yea! even the eyes canst
thou take from a woman, but her manchild, never!”
She spat in the direction of the dwelling where slept the girl upon
whom she waited sometimes as body-woman, whereupon the Nubian laughed
good-naturedly, bidding her keep a hold upon her tongue.
“Yea! but verily,” said the unsuspecting herbalist, “does the Sheikh’s
daughter need a whip across her shoulders.”
“And thou thy tongue pulled forth by the roots!”
Al-Asad, who loved the Sheikh’s daughter with all the strength of his
fierce nature, made an ineffectual grab at the terrified old man as he
shot like a rabbit down the rocky path; then laughed and looked up to
where the girl slept, and fell a-dreaming of the day when, now that
Yussuf was out of the running, he might perchance, by right of force,
step into the Sheikh’s shoes upon his death, to rule the leaderless men
and to wed the fatherless daughter.
The wounds healed, the fever abated, yet for many days, feigning
weakness, tended by the dumb youth whom he christened “His Eyes,” Yussuf
lay planning revenge for his loss of sight.
Distraught with pain, unable to control his thoughts in the agony of his
wounds, he finally decided to leave it to time, which did not mean that
he murmured _Kismet_ in the quiet watches of the everlasting night which
had fallen upon him.
The Oriental submits uncomplainingly to sickness, misfortune and death,
but he sees to it that his revenge is of his own fashioning and one that
will, if possible, descend unto the furthest generation.
He left his sick bed a seemingly humble, repentant, and forgiving soul,
blaming himself for the disaster and promising to make amends for past
misdemeanour—seemingly; for not for one single moment of the dreary days
and pain-filled, sleepless nights did the thought of revenge leave his
tortured mind. Bereft of the joys of hunting and the daily thrills which
make part of a marauder’s life, he wandered by day, ever guarded by “His
Eyes,” around and about the buildings of the monastery and over the rocks
amongst which they had been built; at night he lay, until the coming of
the dawn he could not see, thinking, planning, discarding, to think and
plan again.
The second sight of the blind, through touch and auditory nerve, came to
him swiftly, until, at length, sure-footed as a goat, he passed where no
other would have dared to place a foot; of a truth, there did not seem to
be rock, or precipice, or height round, through, or over, which he could
not lead one safely; nor human whom he could not designate by the sound
of his, or her, footfall on sand or rock.
It approached the uncanny even in the blind, bringing with it a certain
respect from others, who, thinking him possessed of a _djinn_ or evil
spirit of the desert, left him alone, with the exception of Mohammed-Abd
and the half-caste Nubian, who loved him only one whit less than they
loved the girl who had blinded him.
Refusing all aid, even that of “His Eyes,” he passed days in discovering
and establishing the exact position of the narrow path which stretched
through the quicksands up to the foot of the mountain. Day after day,
night after night, in the cool of sunrise or sunset, in the peace of
star or moonlight, or in the noonday heat, he followed the edge of the
quicksands upon his knees, feeling and digging, until one noon his
slender fingers found that for which they searched. He turned his face
to the sun, and, sure-footed as a goat, picked his way, step by step,
backwards, feeling, feeling with his toes, across the quaking bog to the
spear stuck fast between two rocks.
There he passed the blazing hours, registering the location of the path
by the lay of the sun upon the rocks and his mutilated face; and never
once, afterwards, did he fail by day to find his way, unaided, either
going out or coming in, across the narrow way.
He crossed to the desert at night upon the back of either one or the
other of the two animals he loved to ride, and which, with the help of
“His Eyes” and much patience, he trained to negotiate the path without
fear and without help of guiding hand or knee.
During the training, Lulah, spoilt and sensitive, had wellnigh lost
her life more times than could be numbered; whereas Fahm, the black
dromedary, ambled indifferently across the dangerous path as though its
great, cushioned feet trod the desert sands.
A magnificent beast, this black _hejeen_ of Oman.
Brainless as a sheep, swift as the wind, as enduring as it was
obstinate, it was worth the price of many blood-red rubies on account of
its colour, and had fallen to Yussuf as his share of the spoil resultant
upon a sanguinary and none too successful attack upon a caravan of camels
belonging to the great Sheikh Hahmed, the Camel King.
And with it all he waited, patiently and with the Oriental’s fatalism,
throughout the years, for his revenge upon Zarah the Arabian.
Subtle, crafty, determined that by his hand alone should punishment fall
upon her, he had argued with and beseeched the Sheikh and his fellow-men
to spare her. Even upon the night of the disaster had he whispered,
between the cut lips held together by the hour in Namlah’s tender
fingers—had whispered in urgent entreaty, until the men, crowding about
his couch, thinking him crazed with fever, touched their foreheads as
they looked at each other and made oath upon the beard of the Prophet to
do so.
They had thought him crazed with fever then, thereafter they ever thought
him slightly mad.
They would touch their foreheads when he spoke gently of the girl, and
would shake their heads when he questioned them closely about the suitors
who, afire with the tales of her beauty and her wealth, came themselves
or sent emissaries laden with gifts, piled high on camel back, to ask her
hand in marriage.
They thought him slightly mad, whereas, if they could but have seen into
his sane and cunning mind, they would have understood that his interest
in the girl’s marriage had root in a great fear that he would so be
cheated of his revenge.
But Zarah, exceeding proud of the European blood in her veins, had no
wish to wed at an age when European girls were still at school, neither
had she the slightest intention of becoming one of the four wives which
Mohammed the Prophet in his wisdom, knowing the weakness of character
and want of self-control in man, allotted unto the male sex. So that
Yussuf sighed in relief as each suitor, blindfolded, was led back across
the path by which, blindfolded, he had come, and, laden with gifts, set
upon the homeward track.
Actively, he knew he could do nothing in revenge until Fate whispered in
his ear, but in a hundred ways, a hundred times a day, he made the girl’s
life a burden to her.
He refused to cover his face, which was no fit sight for man or woman,
and took to haunting her, craftily withal, so that it seemed that by mere
chance his shadow fell so often upon the path she trod.
She had no escape from him.
If she passed in a crowd he picked out her footfall; when the place was
full of the sound of the neighing of horses and the barking of dogs, he
could hear her coming, and, quick and silent as a beast of prey, sliding,
slipping, holding by his hands, would reach the spot where, knowing the
turns and twists of every path, he knew that she must pass; he would
stand or sit without movement, staring at her out of sightless orbits,
whilst she, believing him ignorant of her presence, would pass swiftly,
silently, with averted head and fingers spread against misfortune.
He stood close behind her in the shadows, wrapped in the Bedouin cloak,
as she leaned on the wall watching the fight between the dogs, one of
which had been accepted as a gift by the rejected suitor who, at that
moment, made his adieux to the Sheikh in the Hall of Judgment.
In the depths of the girl’s startling eyes shone a merciless light; an
amused smile curved the beautiful, scarlet mouth; she clapped her hands
covered in jewels, and, jogged by Fate, laughed aloud at the despair of
the groom who had allowed the dogs to escape from the kennels.
Jaw locked in jaw, bleeding, exhausted, the dogs were fighting to the
death, but they sprang apart when the sound of the girl’s laughter was
brought to them on the evening breeze and crouched, glaring upwards,
ruffs on end, growling, the anger of the moment forgotten in their hatred
of the woman.
Furious at the dogs’ display of hatred in front of the attendant,
consumed with a desire to punish them, Zarah turned to run up the steps
leading to the Hall of Judgment where were stacked the weapons of defence.
“Thy spear!” she shouted to a youth who came towards her from the men’s
quarters.
She seized it from him and leapt upon the wall, standing straight and
beautiful, her white draperies blown against her by the evening breeze.
She paid no attention to the shouting of the groom; instead, she took
careful aim and laughed as the spear, flashing like silver in the sun
rays, sped downwards and buried itself in the flank of the greyhound
which had been accepted as a gift by her father’s guest.
Her vanity appeased, she turned away, neither did she look back as she
mounted the steps to her own dwelling.
Had she but glanced over her shoulder she might have taken a warning from
the terrible look of satisfaction on blind Yussuf’s face.
“‘The little bird preens the breast, while the sportsman sets his net.’”
He laughed to himself as he muttered the proverb, and passed on into the
shadows and out of sight.