“Yet I go, Martina.”
“You, being blind, go to Egypt to seek one whom those who rule there have searched for in vain. So be it. But how will you go? It cannot be as an open enemy, since then you would need a fleet and ten thousand swords to back you, which you have not. To take a few brave men, unless they were Moslems, which is impossible, would be but to give them to death. How do you go, Olaf?”
“I do not know, Martina. Your brain is more nimble than mine; think, think, and tell me.”
I heard Martina rise and walk up and down the room for a long time. At length she returned and sat herself by me again.
“Olaf,” she said, “you always had a taste for music. You have told me that as a boy in your northern home you used to play upon the harp and sing songs to it of your own making, and now, since you have been blind, you have practised at this art till you are its master. Also, my voice is good; indeed, it is my only gift. It was my voice that first brought me to Irene’s notice, when I was but the daughter of a poor Greek gentleman who had been her father’s friend and therefore was given a small place about the Court. Of late we have sung many songs together, have we not, certain of them in that northern tongue, of which you have taught me something?”
“Yes, Martina; but what of it?”
“You are dull, Olaf. I have heard that these Easterns love music, especially if it be of a sort they do not know. Why, therefore, should not a blind man and his daughter—no, his orphaned niece—earn an honest living as travelling musicians in Egypt? These Prophet worshippers, I am told, think it a great sin to harm one who is maimed—a poor northern trader in amber who has been robbed by Christian thieves. Rendered sightless also that he might not be able to swear to them before the judges, and now, with his sister’s child, winning his bread as best he may. Like you, Olaf, I have skill in languages, and even know enough of Arabic to beg in it, for my mother, who was a Syrian, taught it to me as a child, and since we have been here I have practised. What say you?”
“I say that we might travel as safely thus as in any other way. Yet, Martina, how can I ask you to tie such a burden on your back?”
“Oh! no need to ask, Olaf, since Fate bound it there when it made me your—god-mother. Where you go I needs must go also, until you are married,” she added with a laugh. “Afterwards, perhaps, you will need me no more. Well, there’s a plan, for what it is worth, and now we’ll sleep on it, hoping to find a better. Pray to St. Michael to-night, Olaf.”
As it chanced, St. Michael gave me no light, so the end of it was that I determined to play this part of a blind harper. In those days there was a trade between Lesbos and Egypt in cedar wood, wool, wine for the Copts, for the Moslems drank none, and other goods. Peace having been declared between the island and the Caliph, a small vessel was laden with such merchandise at my cost, and a Greek of Lesbos, Menas by name, put in command of it as the owner, with a crew of sailors whom I could trust to the death.