With a view to spreading reports of her beauty, her riches, and her power, she allowed some of the prisoners to return to their homes without payment of ransom; others disappeared leaving no trace, whilst many, wholeheartedly, threw in their lot with the band, working as grooms to the horses and dogs, as tenders to the cattle, as servants or labourers, marrying the women who looked after the comforts of the strange community; all of them happy in a freedom they could not have realized elsewhere, yet terror-stricken by their mistress, who ordered the severest punishments for the most trifling mistake.
Built in terraces as had been the ancient monastery, the servants’ quarters stretched up the eastern side of the mountains, hidden by the jutting wall of rock from the western side where Zarah lived, alone. The walls of the monastery remained, but the interior of the buildings had been changed out of all recognition. Where once her father had lived, with his friend Yussuf, in all the simplicity of those who belong to the desert, the girl lived in barbaric luxury, the presence of Yussuf the only cloud upon what seemed otherwise to be a clear horizon.
Of love she would have none.
Those who had succumbed to the tales of her beauty, her wealth and her power, and who were willing to risk much through greed, sent emissaries, laden with many gifts, to negotiate for her hand in marriage. They would be met far out in the desert, and, blindfolded, led across the quicksands and into the presence of the mysterious woman. She received them right royally, fêted them, laughed at them in secret, and sent them back to their masters, with her own gifts added to those she had rejected.
She did not attempt to conquer her love for Ralph Trenchard; she did not want to; she hugged close the pain it caused her pride, and had sent spies to Egypt in an endeavour to trace him. A report came that he had landed at Port Said. After that, silence.
She was thinking of him as she lay back in the chair watching the men, gathered at her command, in the Hall of Judgment. Upon the first of every three months she called a council, with the object of making plans for the months succeeding. Those of the men who could, hurried from every part of the Peninsula to the gathering. A week of festival invariably followed the great day, during which sports were held and much wine drunk, in direct disobedience to the law laid down by Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah the one and only God. Those of the men who could not attend, and who were mostly those who had failed in the task set them, sent in reports of their work by safe messenger.
The spy who had reported the arrival of Ralph Trenchard at Port Said had not appeared in person, nor sent in further report, so that Zarah sat a prey to a great anger, which increased every moment under the goad of suspense and uncertainty, and craved for a victim upon which to vent herself.
The business of the hour, with its reports and reprimands, suggestions, punishments and rewards, had been concluded, and the men waited, eager to draw out a programme for the week of festival; they looked at their despotic ruler, raised above them on a dais, as she lay back in her chair sullenly regarding them out of half-closed eyes; they murmured amongst themselves but, under the spell of her beauty, murmured only.
She made an arresting Eastern picture outlined against an enormous fan of peacocks’ feathers, which spread on each side and above her. It glowed vividly against the south wall of the hall, which had been covered in Byzantine gold leaf, outlined by an arabesque design carved out in rough lumps of turquoise matrix, agate, jasper, onyx, and different coloured marble.
Seven jewelled lamps, hanging above her head by golden chains, were reflected in the polished surface of the huge dais hewn out of one great block of black granite, up which she ascended by seven steps carved to represent seven crouching lions.