“Thou hast trouble at,” he said, and put some cakes of dourha and a meated cucumber beside her. She touched the food with her fingers, but did not eat. “Is thy grief, then, for thy prince who gave himself to the lions?” he asked.
“Inshallah! Harrik is in the bosom of Allah. He is with Fatima in the fields of heaven—was I as Fatima to him? Nay, the dead have done with hurting.”
“Since that night thou hast been lost, even since Harrik went. I searched for thee, but thou wert hid. Surely, thou knewest mine eyes were aching and my heart was cast down—did not thou and I feed at the same breast?”
“I was dead, and am come forth from the grave; but I shall go again into the dark where all shall forget, even I myself; but there is that which I would do, which thou must do for me, even as I shall do good to thee, that which is the desire of my heart.”
“Speak, light of the morning and blessing of thy mother’s soul,” he said, and crowded into his mouth a roll of meat and cucumber. “Against thy feddan shall be set my date-tree; it hath been so ever.”
“Listen then, and by the stone of the Kaabah, keep the faith which has been throe and mine since my mother, dying, gave me to thy mother, whose milk gave me health and, in my youth, beauty—and, in my youth, beauty!” Suddenly she buried her face in her veil, and her body shook with sobs which had no voice. Presently she continued: “Listen, and by Abraham and Christ and all the Prophets, and by Mahomet the true revealer, give me thine aid. When Harrik gave his life to the lions, I fled to her whom I had loved in the house of Kaid—Laka the Syrian, afterwards the wife of Achmet Pasha. By Harrik’s death I was free—no more a slave. Once Laka had been the joy of Achmet’s heart, but, because she had no child, she was despised and forgotten. Was it not meet I should fly to her whose sorrow would hide my loneliness? And so it was—I was hidden in the harem of Achmet. But miserable tongues—may God wither them!—told Achmet of my presence. And though I was free, and not a bondswoman, he broke upon my sleep....”
Mahommed’s eyes blazed, his dark skin blackened like a coal, and he muttered maledictions between his teeth. “... In the morning there was a horror upon me, for which there is no name. But I laughed also when I took a dagger and stole from the harem to find him in the quarters beyond the women’s gate. I found him, but I held my hand, for one was with him who spake with a tone of anger and of death, and I listened. Then, indeed, I rejoiced for thee, for I have found thee a road to honour and fortune. The man was a bridge-opener—” “Ah!—O, light of a thousand eyes, fruit of the tree of Eden!” cried Mahommed, and fell on his knees at her feet, and would have kissed them, but that, with a cry, she said: “Nay, nay, touch me not. But listen.... Ay, it was Achmet who sought to drown thy Pasha in the Nile. Thou shalt find the man in the little street called Singat in the Moosky, at the house of Haleel the date-seller.”
Mahommed rocked backwards and forwards in his delight. “Oh, now art thou like a lamp of Paradise, even as a star which leadeth an army of stars, beloved,” he said. He rubbed his hands together. “Thy witness and his shall send Achmet to a hell of scorpions, and I shall slay the bridge-opener with my own hand—hath not the Effendina secretly said so to me, knowing that my Pasha, the Inglesi, upon whom be peace for ever and forever, would forgive him. Ah, thou blossom of the tree of trees—”
She rose hastily, and when he would have kissed her hand she drew back to the wall. “Touch me not—nay, then, Mahommed, touch me not—”
“Why should I not pay thee honour, thou princess among women? Hast thou not the brain of a man, and thy beauty, like thy heart, is it not—”