HOW MARY REDEEMED HER SOUL
Near midnight--Morgiana had gone to her chamber early, but not to
sleep. The throb of the music, the crash of the cymbals, the shoutings
and laughter of the thousands,--all these nigh drove her mad. Twice
had she tried to shut all out by a fierce resolve to hear no more, and
sleep. Useless; sleep was a thousand leagues away. She had stood by
her lattice and seen the multitudes swarming down to the illumined
quay, had heard the praises of Mary Kurkuas ring up to heaven, had
seen the boat glide into the darkness. And the Arab had cast herself
on her cushions, and wept and wept, until her tears would no more
flow. How long a time sped thus, she might not tell. When next she
knew anything save her grief, she heard a light hand thrusting back
the curtains from her bed.
"Morgiana." Mary stood holding a little silver lamp. The coronet was
still flashing on her flowing hair, the dim light shining on her bare
neck and swan-white shoulders. Never in the eyes of her rival had she
seemed fairer. Morgiana stirred, stared into Mary's face.
"You have yielded! You are his--his forever! Oh, sorrow, sorrow!" So
cried the Arab; but the Greek touched her cheek softly.
"Hush, dear sister! I have not yielded. I have defied him; and this
time there is a gulf sprung between us that only death can close. It
was an angel from heaven that spoke; I must, I will--escape him! I
must fly, fly--or it is best to perish!"
"Fly!" cried Morgiana, startled now. "Allah the Compassionate! You are
mad!" Mary checked her.
"No, not mad; only I know that I cannot sell my soul to Iftikhar
Eddauleh, though he led me sultana through Bagdad. Listen: I had a
terrible scene with him in the boat. God knows what I said or did; I
recall nothing, save as out of a frightful dream. But one thing I
know, I am the wife of Richard Longsword, and till I know he is
numbered with the dead, I will lift eyes to no man, nor angel either;
but to Iftikhar Eddauleh never--till the endless ages end! Dear God--I
can endure no more. I must--I will--fly!"
"O dearest one," cried Morgiana, troubled greatly, "how may I comfort
you? say what? do what? Allah pity us both!"
"He will have pity!" burst out the Greek. "Follow me. When Iftikhar
rowed back to the shore he was in a black rage. I hoped he would
strike me dead. He did not. The Sultan Redouan and his lords were
feasting in the palace. Said Iftikhar to the eunuchs at the quay, 'I
must join the revelling, but lead the accursed woman back to the
harem; for seven days she shall not see my face, since she likes it so
ill.' But the eunuchs were reeling with their wine. I wrapped a veil
about me, and evaded them. Then I wandered through the palace, as did
the other women come from Aleppo. No one knew me. And as I strayed by
the great banqueting hall, I saw one whom they styled Aboun Nedjn,
vizier of Redouan, rise and shout the pledge, 'To the confusion of the
Christians, and may they soon fight their last before Antioch!' Then I
turned to one of the women, and said, 'And are the Christians
besieging Antioch?' and she replied: 'How ignorant! All Aleppo knows
that they have lain about that city all winter; certain prisoners of
theirs have been brought to Aleppo; and now the Lord Iftikhar makes
ready to join the great host which Kerbogha, emir of Mosul, is
gathering to deliver Antioch and its prince, Yaghi-Sian.' Then I
listened no more, but fled straight to you. For I must fly this very
night. Think, Morgiana: at Antioch are the Christians; at Antioch are
Duke Godfrey, and Raymond, and Tancred; at Antioch, oh, joy! is
Richard Longsword, whose soul is more dear than my own!"
"But, sweet sister," protested the Arab, "Antioch, I believe, is
twenty of our Eastern leagues away, perhaps sixty of your Frankish
miles. How can you make the journey? Alone?"
"To-night!" cried Mary, tearing the gold from her hair. "To-night! All
the palace is drunken. Even the 'devoted' are in stupid sleep. No
watch is kept, I saw that well. A late slave boy returning to his
master in Aleppo--no questions."
"But the dangers of the way! Full of bandits, roving horsemen, the
scum of both armies--for such must be afield. You on foot! The
hardships; deathly peril!"
"Light of my heart," exclaimed the Greek, "let the jackals prey on
me--beasts or more cruel men,--if they be not Iftikhar Eddauleh!"
"Curse him not," blazed the other; "not even you shall speak him ill.
Fool, that you do not love him!"
Mary was tearing off her silken dress.
"Morgiana," she said very quietly, "you know the presses where the
eunuchs keep their clothes:--bring me a vest and mantle, and a
turban,--the coarsest you can find; and heavy shoes, if any fit me.
St. Theodore," she cried, looking down at the white thongs of her
sandals, where the gems were shining, "how miserable to have such
small feet!"
Morgiana obeyed without a word.
"Your skin! Your face white as milk!" she protested, when Mary stood
in the costume of a serving-page.
The Greek laughed. "Have I not mocked you often for your Persian
'light of the cheeks' which you keep in that casket? Take your pencils
and your _kohl_, and make me dark and tanned as a true Syrian! Haste;
the night is flying!" As she spoke, an iron ball dropped from the
water-clock in the corner upon a bell. "An hour after midnight. Quick,
if you love me and love yourself!"
Morgiana did her task with all deftness.
"They will search for you. You will be pursued at dawn!"
"Say to Iftikhar," was the ready answer, "that I have wandered from
the palace vowing to cast myself in the lake. Let him bid his
'devoted' seek me there."
"_Wallah!_ You are a terrible maid!" cried the Arabian. "But how
beautiful a serving-boy!"
"Now," continued Mary, desperately, "shears! my hair!"
"Never," protested the other; "not as I live, shall I touch it. See, I
will bind it up beneath your turban. But oh, think better; do not go.
The danger is terrible!"
"Morgiana," was the answer, "my husband is at Antioch. Naught can
befall me worse than I suffer here. You have been a sweet sister to
me; and I leave my kiss for Eleanor. May we never meet again!
Farewell."
They kissed each other. Mary saw Morgiana standing in the dim
lamplight, her head bowed upon her hands. Then the Greek stole through
the dimly lighted halls. When she stepped past the nodding eunuchs who
were standing guard at the harem entrance, she felt a little quiver.
They gave her never a sign. She wandered across the great entrance
hall; only two lamps twinkling high up from the stalactites by the
dome,--weird, ghostly light. She stumbled on some form--a man sleeping
in his drunkenness; for the law of the Prophet against wine, who had
observed that night? She saw dimly low gilt and ebony tables beside
the divans, the food still on them. She caught some cakes of bread and
thrust them under her girdle, then tasted a cup that had not been
drained. The wine was sweet, she did not like it. She wandered on.
Here was the portico, where another guard stared at her stupidly. She
passed outward, two others passed in; a dying flambeau showed the
features of Iftikhar and Hakem. Mary trembled, but one of the pillars
was good shelter. The emir had been over his cups, and his face was
flushed, his speech thick, rapid. The eunuch as ever was smiling.
"By every evil efreet!" Iftikhar was swearing, "I will make her bend.
In the boat I thought to win her kiss; she spat upon me! struggled so
that scarce my strength could keep her from casting us into the lake!
called the name of her accursed husband! See to her, Hakem. Bring her
to more tractable state, and I give a thousand dinars; but let her
spurn me again, and by the Brightness of Allah I will teach her she is
slave indeed!"
"The Fountain of Omnipotence," replied the eunuch, smoothly, "is too
kind. Let the Star of the Greeks be given into my full custody. Let
her learn to bow her head to poor Hakem; and it will go hard, unless
she is all smiles to Iftikhar Eddauleh."
"_Mashallah!_" cried the emir, "it shall be as you say. Well, I have
sworn I will see her no more for seven days. Tame her, as you will.
Sometimes I curse the hour when first I set eyes on her. Why shall I
not deal with her as with any slave? Why speak of her love, her
favor?--her body I own, assuredly. As for her soul,--_Wallah!_ to us
Ismaelians of the upper degree, if man or maid have a soul--it is of
too strange stuff to be reckoned with. But come, good slave! I have
drunk too deep to-night. Soon I expect word from Kerbogha that our
host must move to Antioch; and then I shall have other things in mind
than flambeaux and the eyes of a maid."
"My lord speaks with the wisdom of Allah!" fawned the eunuch. "I will
go to our little bird to see that she sleeps secure, and in the
morning she shall know your will."
They passed within the palace. Mary glided up to the great gate. The
yawning porters were just closing.
"Eblees possess you!" cried one, holding up a lantern. "Back into the
palace! Will you wander home to Aleppo at this hour? The city gates
are barred long ago." But Mary's wits could work fast just now.
"Good brother," said she, jauntily, "I have stayed over-late, I know.
But if I fail to return, my master makes my back pay with cold
stripes. And I have a friend on the watch at the gate who will open
when I call."
"_Mashallah!_ you speak a strange Arabic!" protested the man. "Your
hands are small as those of the Star of the Greeks that they say our
lord loves better than El Halebah itself."
"And you too, friend," was her reply, "speak a tongue that makes me
half believe you Christian! And no man living would liken your hands
to any save ditcher's spades!"
"By Mohammed's beard!" exclaimed the fellow, good-naturedly, "you have
a sharp tongue in your little body. Well, go; and let the kind jinns
fly with you. Though almost I think you are girl, and would cry to you
'a kiss!'"
"Never to such as you!" the retort. The gate closed behind her. All
was dark. The last lamps on the great domes were out. Mary stole on in
silence. There was not the slightest sound of bird, beast, or stirring
leaf; just light enough to see where amid the trees the avenue led
away from El Halebah to the outer road. Along that roadway--sixty
miles due east, so she had reckoned--lay the camp of the
Christians--and Richard Longsword! She was alone, and free! For a
while neither weariness nor fear smote her. The ground could not fly
fast enough under her feet. Again and again she wandered against
thicket or trunk in the dimness of the trees, but the way led on, and
she did not lose it. There was a strange gladness in her heart. "To
Richard! to Richard!" O had she but eagle's wings to lend speed to her
going! Suddenly the trees stopped. She was at the edge of the palace
groves. To one side under the starlight she could just see the
untraced masses of something--Aleppo; to the other side, the east, the
stars told her, the hill and plain country stretched out scarce
discernible. Mary turned her face toward the east, and saw the grove
sink out of sight in the darkness. Then she walked yet faster.
* * * * *
It was noon, and the Syrian sun beat down pitilessly. The spring
foliage and buds seemed wilting under the fiery eye. The little brooks
on the hillside had already dried to a trickling thread. Everywhere
the eye lit on reddish sand; red sand-hills and plain country with
here and there a tree. The road had faded to the merest trail, where a
few horses had trodden the thin weeds a day or two before. Mary rose
from the stone by this roadway, where she had been sitting beneath a
solitary sumac. She had eaten her bread, had lifted the water in her
hands out of the tiny pool. She was weary--utterly weary. Had she been
told she had traversed a thousand leagues since setting forth the
night before, she could well have believed it. Yet reason bespoke that
she had come less than a score of miles. She was footsore, hungry,
frightened. The caw of the distant crow bore terror; the whir of the
wind over the sunny plain half seemed the howl of desert wolves.
Already her feet trudged on painfully, while her unaccustomed dress
was dusty and torn. Each moment the utter folly of her flight grew
upon her. She was alone, a helpless maid in the midst of that often
harried country which lay between Antioch and Aleppo. Only once had
she met human kind. During the morning two swarthy-skinned peasants,
flogging an obstinate ass toward Aleppo, had stopped, and gazed
curiously at this solitary youth in page's dress, but with the face of
one of Sultan Redouan's harem beauties.
"Brother," one of the peasants had cried, "do you know that from
Antioch to Aleppo scarce one house is inhabited? The Christians--may
Allah bring them to perdition!--have sacked Dana and Sermada, and left
only the dogs alive. All honest folk have fled nearer to Aleppo or
southward."
"I thank you, kind sheik," came the answer in an Arabic that made the
peasant marvel, "but I know my road. Yet are there any Christians now
at Dana?"
"Praised be the Compassionate! Since the battle at Harenc they keep
closer to their camps, though Allah that day vouchsafed them victory.
It is told that Yaghi-Sian is making so many sallies, they are more
than taxed to repel him, glory be to the Most High!"
"I thank you, good sheik; peace be with you!" And Mary had hastened on
her way, leaving the peasants to wonder.
One said: "Let us go back. This youth is no common wayfarer. Let us
question him further."
But the other wisely answered:--
"The day is hot. What is written in the book of doom is written. Leave
the youth to God! Let us reach Aleppo and rest!"
So they fell again to beating the ass, while Mary dropped them out of
view. She had been made less weary then, and the dialogue had lent
wings to her feet. Presently she came to a wretched village: squalid,
dark, rubble houses with thatched roofs; a few poor fields around,
with the weeds growing higher than the sprouting corn. She hesitated
to walk through the single street, but not a soul met her. The doors
of the houses gaped open; within was scanty household stuff scattered
over the earthen floors. Every house bore signs of hasty leaving. Two
or three were mere charred shells, for the torch had been set to their
thatches. Over in the field a flock of crows and kites were
wheeling,--some carrion,--but Mary did not go near. Yet, as she walked
this street, as it seemed of the dead, forth ran snapping and barking
several gray, blear-eyed dogs. For a moment she quaked lest they tear
her in pieces. But at the sound of her voice they sank back whining,
and followed on a long time, sniffing the bread under her girdle, and
hoping to be fed.
She shook them off at last, half glad, half sorry, to have nothing
living near her. And now she was sitting by the roadway, looking down
into the tiny pool and thinking. She took off her shoes and let her
little white feet trail in the water,--very little and very white,
never fashioned by the Creator, so she told herself with a sobbing
laugh, to be bruised by the hard road. Once Musa at Palermo had
composed verses in praise of her feet; how they were shaped only to
tread upon flowers, or to whisk in dances, or be bathed with perfumes
worth an emir's ransom. Holy Mother! and what were they like to walk
over now! She looked at her hands; as she dipped them in the brook
nearly all the bronzing of Morgiana had washed away. They too had been
praised, times past numbering. A learned poet at Constantinople had
written some polished iambics, likening them to the hands of Artemis,
virgin huntress on the Arcadian hills. How helpless and worthless
they were! Mary saw her face in the pool also. Her beauty--despite the
disguise--her curse; the bane of so many lovers! "Better, better,"
came the thought, "a thousand times I had been foul as an old hag,
than to have my beauty lay snares for my soul!" And then the thought
followed: "No, not better, whatever be my fate; for by my beauty I won
the love of Richard, and the memory of his love cannot be taken from
me in a thousand years!" Then, speaking to herself, she said
resolutely: "Now, my foolish Mary de St. Julien, though your feet are
so weary, they must prepare to be still more weary. For there is many
a long league yet before you see the Christian camp at Antioch, and
set eyes on your dread Frankish lord."
So, telling herself that she was a soldier's daughter and a soldier's
wife, that the toils of travel would be as nothing to her father's
campaign with the Patzinaks, she arose to continue the toilsome way.
But as she stood over the little pool, the water looked more cool and
tempting than ever. It was tedious to drink from the hands--a cup! Her
hands went up to her hair, where was the blue muslin turban so
carefully wound by Morgiana; and underneath it a silken skullcap. She
unwound the turban, her hair fell in soft brown tresses all over her
shoulders. As she bent to fill the cap, in the water she saw again her
face, framed now in the shining hair.
"Allah!" she cried, after the manner of the Arabs, "how beautiful I
am! how Richard will love me!" And she laughed at her own complacency.
A sudden shout made her start like a fawn when the hounds are baying;
then a rush of hoofs, an outcry.
"Iftikhar! He is pursuing!" her thought; and Mary sprang to run up the
sandy hillside. Not Iftikhar; from behind the little sand-hill to the
west six horsemen had appeared in a twinkling: all on long-limbed,
sleek-coated desert steeds. Mary ran as for dear life, scarce knowing
what she did.
"_Ya! Ya!_" came the shout, in a mongrel Arabic, "a maid; seize!
capture! a prize!"
It was all over in less time than the telling. Mary never knew how it
befell. She was standing once more by the roadway; two men,
dismounted, were holding her. The other four still sat on their
saddles. All six were devouring her with their eyes, and pelting her
with questions she had no wits to answer. Her captors, she began to
judge, were roving Syrian cavalrymen--half warriors, half bandits,
tall, wiry-limbed, swarthy, sharp-featured. They and their steeds were
gorgeously decked out with strings of bright silk tassels. They wore
light steel caps polished bright; at their sides were short cimeters;
over their shoulders were curved bows and round, brass-studded
targets. When they opened their bearded lips to chatter, their teeth
shone sharp and white as of hungry cats. At last Mary found words. The
blood of the great house of Kurkuas was in her veins. Even in this
dire strait she knew how to put on pride and high disdain.
"Slaves," was her command, "unhand me! Who are you, so much as to look
upon my face! By what right will you treat me as is unfit to one of
your own coarse brood?"
The curve of the lip and the lordly poise for an instant disconcerted
even the Syrians. But soon one of them answered, with a soldier's
banter:--
"By the soul of my father, pretty one, I half dream you a sultana.
Does Allah rain houris in youths' clothes upon the waste land betwixt
Sermada and Harenc? _Bismillah!_ we do not light every day on a
partridge plump as you!"
"Let me go, fools," cried the Greek, turning very pale, but more with
wrath than fear, "or you will find my little finger large enough to
undo you all."
But at this the six only roared their laughter, and for a moment ogled
their captive with sinful eyes that made Mary's soul turn sick. She
made one last appeal, and only her own heart knew what it cost her to
say the word.
"Act not in folly. Carry me to Aleppo, and deliver me safely to the
great emir, Iftikhar Eddauleh. He will give you for me my weight in
gold."
Another laugh, but the six looked at one another.
"Tell me," quoth the earlier speaker, "O Star that falls in the
Desert, how you come here, if you are possessed by Iftikhar Eddauleh?"
Mary only flushed with new anger.
"Beast, who are you that I should answer? Do as I bid you, or it will
be to your hurt!"
"Truly, O Yezid," began a second Syrian, "it may be as she says. Let
us ride to Aleppo."
But Yezid, who seemed the leader of the band, gave a deep curse.
"To Aleppo? We are too little loved by Redouan to risk our heads
within bowshot of his executioner. Look upon the maid; she is one of
the Franks, whoever she be. She will fetch a hundred purses in the
market. Yet I am minded myself to possess her!"
Mary looked at the Syrian; noted his coarse, carnal eye, and the
impure passion in it, and felt her heart turning to stone.
"Dear God," ran her prayer, "give me strength to bear all; for I am in
the clutch of demons."
But the other five had raised a great outcry.
"Verily, O Yezid," shouted one, "you are a river of generosity. Six of
us capture the maid, and you protest that she is yours alone. May
Allah cut me off from Paradise if I part with my claim to her."
"And who are you, O Zubair," raged back Yezid, his teeth more catlike
than ever, "to dispute my right? Am I not the chief? When we held the
rich Jew without water four days since, did I not share the ransom
equally? And now that we possess this maid, whose form and face fit my
eye as my sword its sheath--" and as he spoke he laid his hand on
Mary's bare neck, making the white flesh creep under his foul touch,
and lifting the soft mass of her telltale hair. The five cut him short
with one yell. "Never, insatiate one!" And Zubair added: "Let the maid
be sold, and the money divided. If we may not take her to Aleppo, let
us swing her across a saddle and spur away to Hamath, where there is a
good market! As you have said,--a hundred purses for such an houri of
the Franks. Better profit twenty fold than watching these roads, when
the Christians have swept the country clean!"
Yezid grinned more savagely than ever; and Mary closed her eyes that
she might not see his leer.
"I have sworn it," cried he. "This once must you sons of Eblees give
way. I like the girl well. Not for an hundred purses would I part with
her. Is she not my captive? shall I not bear her away to the mountains
where is our camp, and the other women?"
Mary closed her eyes tighter. She knew _then_, if not before, that it
had been a mad boast indeed when she said to Morgiana, "Naught can
befall me worse than I suffer here at El Halebah." The evening before
she had been hailed princess, sovereign of thousands--and now! Her
eyes she could close; not her ears, and the foul speech of the angry
Syrians smote them, though her sense grew numb by sheer agony. Louder
and louder the quarrel. Presently she heard a great shout from Yezid.
"By the Beard of Mohammed! either you shall give the girl up to me, to
work my will, or my cimeter is in her breast." His clutch tightened,
and Mary saw through her eyelashes a bright blade held before her.
"Death at last, the Blessed Mother be praised!" and she closed her
eyes, and tried to murmur the words of "Our Father." But the voice of
Zubair grew conciliatory. "Valiant captain, not so angry. You have the
chief claim, but not the only one. Let us not broil, good comrades
that we are. True the Prophet--on whom be peace--forbids dice; but
Allah will be compassionate, and I have some about me. Let us cast for
the maid. You win and possess her. We,--she goes to Hamath, and the
sale's money is divided amongst us five!"
Yezid began to growl in his beard, but the shout of the rest silenced
him. "Let it be as you said!" he muttered. And Mary, opening her eyes,
now saw Zubair and the chief standing by the rock, and shaking the
dice in the hollows of their hands. How strange it all looked! On the
cast of four bits of ivory her own weal or woe was hanging! The
fortune of her--a Grecian princess, a baroness of France, a Sultana of
the Ismaelians! Was it not a dream? One cast,--a curse from Zubair. A
second,--Yezid smiled and smirked toward her. Again Zubair
cast,--again he cursed; and when Yezid lifted his hand he gave a loud,
beastly laugh.
"Praises be to Allah! You have all lost. This houri, comes she here
from the clouds or from Aleppo, is mine. _Ya!_ I can wait no more to
kiss her!" But just as Mary felt sight and sound reeling when he
seized her, there was a great howl from the Syrians.
"Flight! To horse! O Allah, save!" And down the eastern road Mary saw,
not six, but sixty, cavalrymen in headlong gallop; all with white
robes and turbans, and at the head a rider whose armor was bright as
the sun.
"Away, my peacock!" shouted Yezid, who, even in that moment, tried to
swing Mary into his saddle before him. But as the words sped from his
sinful throat, a shaft of Iftikhar went through his horse's flank, and
the wounded beast was plunging.
"_Allah akhbar!_" the yell of the Ismaelians as they swept around
Mary's captors, almost ere the luckless bandits could strike spur; and
it was Iftikhar's own hand that plucked Mary from the clutch of Yezid.
"Bind fast!" his command. "_Bismillah!_ what were they about to do?"
"This beast had won me at dice. He was to carry me to his den in the
mountains, he boasted," Mary said, with twitching lips.
"Mercy, O Sea of Compassion!" Yezid was whining; "how should I know
that I offended my lord?"
"_Ya_," hissed Iftikhar; "strike off the heads of these five here; let
the jackals eat them. But their chief shall go to Aleppo, where we
will plunge his head in a sack of quicklime."
Then, with not a word to Mary, he had his men devise a horse-litter,
placed her in it, and the whole troop headed again for Aleppo.