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.