Skins of wild beasts were thrown upon a mosaic floor which replaced the rough stones laid down by the Holy Fathers. It had been set by skilled Italian workmen, taken prisoners as they returned from Bagdad, where they had been sent to set the famous mosaic floor in the house of the Eastern potentate, who is almost as famous as his flooring.
The Italians had won back their freedom by promising to outrival the beauty of this floor in Bagdad, and, having fulfilled the promise, had returned, laden with gifts and well content, to their own country. The pillars of palm trees had been removed and replaced by others of stone, inlaid roughly with uncut turquoise matrix, jasper and agate, which reflected the light of the jewelled lamps hanging from the roof. The flat roof, which the dead Sheikh had considered good enough as a covering, had been removed and replaced by another, vaulted, painted the colour of the night sky and powdered with silvery stars. It showed misty, this night, above the smoke of torches held above their heads by thirty prisoners who stood upon the stools once used as seats by the Holy Fathers, pushed back against the walls hung with curtains of purple velvet.
Informed that one movement meant instant death, prisoners awaiting sentence would be ordered to hold lighted torches above their heads whilst the Arabian girl sat discussing the events of the day or merely idling away time watching the men wrestling or gambling, in which last pastime she frequently joined.
Men meant nothing to her, but her overwhelming vanity caused her to change her raiment many times a day and to smother herself in jewels.
This night her slender limbs showed through voluminous trousers made of some semi-transparent material, woven by her women slaves, and caught at the ankles by bands of gold inlaid with precious stones; her body, save for breast-plates blazing in jewels, was bare, and showed like white satin in the light of the torches and the lamps above her head; her hands glittered with precious stones, her arms were bare, and a broad gold band set in diamonds bound her head, confining the thick, red curls.
She sat alone, furious, tortured, her sandalled feet upon an ivory footstool, her strange eyes flashing from one side of the hall to the other in an endeavour to find an outlet for her wrath.
She scrutinized the twenty men and ten women of Damascus who had been captured on their way to Bagdad with a precious load of steel weapons, and smiled as she glanced from their leader, a fine old man with white hair and beard and flowing robes, to the girl, his granddaughter, at his side, and on to the young men and women who had gained a world-wide reputation through their work of inlaying steel with gold.
With the fear of death, the one for the other, they had stood throughout the whole evening, motionless, save when slaves replaced the burnt-out torches; but a shiver swept them, and a smile of satisfaction lit the faces of the men in the body of the hall when the old man swayed, then crashed to the ground with a cry.
Zarah sat upright, her eyes gleaming, her jewels flashing, whilst the men looked from her to the prostrate man and back.
“Get up!” she cried, too intent upon her enjoyment of the moment to notice that her enemy Yussuf had entered the hall, standing, a menacing figure, against the wall. “Get up!” she repeated, “lest I give orders to have thee thrown from the rocks so that thou standest for eternity upon thy head in the quicksands.”