The place was bare, save for rugs upon the floor and the cushions of every colour of the rainbow, embroidered in gold, patterned in jewels, and quite unfit for an invalid’s repose.
It was refreshingly cool in spite of being nearer the scorching sun than any other part of the erstwhile monastery. A great slab of rock, many feet in thickness, jutting from the mountainside, made a natural ceiling; huge brass bowls full of water stood on the rock floor; the desert winds of dawn and sunset blew in at the cross-shaped apertures which took the place of windows in the east and west walls, built of pieces of stone of all shapes and sizes, fitted together in mosaic fashion and two feet thick; the door faced the cleft in the mountain ring, and through it could be seen the limitless desert, a view of infinite peace.
An austere place, imbued with quiet strength, an eyrie of peace, conjuring up pictures of abstinence and sacrifice, it stood as it had been built all those centuries ago by the Holy Fathers for their prior, connected with the plateau by a dizzy flight of steps leading straight down to the water which Sir Richard had hoped to discover for the good of mankind and his own satisfaction.
Namlah, the native woman, shivered as she sat outside on the edge of the platform upon which the place had been built, but as much from the effect her surroundings were having upon her as from the chill breeze of dawn. She got to her feet, her many anklets jangling as she moved, and walked to the edge of the rock ledge and looked down at the water and shivered again and sighed.
Zarah the Cruel had made the biggest mistake of her life when, in a fit of towering rage, she had set Namlah to tend and guard Helen Raynor. She had thought to set a jailer at the girl’s door; she had placed a friend. She had thought to take the body-woman’s thoughts away from her dead son by piling still more work upon the bent shoulders; instead she gave her hours in which to sit, to dream, to plan out some way in which to revenge herself for the loss of her child.
Her son had not returned from the disastrous battle. He lay somewhere out there in the desert. Her son was dead. And when, mad with grief, she had flung herself at her mistress’s feet and begged to be allowed to go and find him and bury him, she had been struck across the mouth and ordered up to the dwelling where the prisoner lay, and threatened with still more dire punishment if she told the white girl aught about the secrets of the place.
And what could worse punishment mean but the death of the one son left her? The dumb boy she loved even more than she had loved the one who had not returned from battle; the boy who had been nicknamed “Yussuf’s Eyes,” and who spoke by tapping with his slender fingers upon the blind man’s arm, and almost as readily and clearly as if he used his silent tongue.
Grief and a great fear filled her heart.
What if Zarah the Merciless took this son? She touched an amulet of good luck which hung about her neck and turned to draw an extra covering over the prisoner left in her care.
“Beautiful! Beautiful!” she whispered, gently stroking the golden hair she delighted to brush for the hour together, and which covered the girl, like a veil, to her knees. “What will be thy fate in the hands of the one who knows no mercy?” She spat as she spoke and sat down at the foot of the divan. “Thou a slave who art a queen in beauty? Thou to obey where thou hast ruled, to go when ordered, to come when bidden? Nay! Allah protect thee and bring thee safely through that which awaits thee. I love thee, white woman, for thy gentleness in thy distress. Not one harsh word in the days when the fever ran high; not one black look in these days when thy weakness is as that of the new-born lamb. Behold, is this the time to replace about thy neck the amulet which fell from thy strange clothing when I did take them from off thee, thou white flower?” She searched in her voluminous robes and drew out a small golden locket on a broken chain, and sat turning it over and over in her hand, fighting a great temptation. She fingered the brass bracelets and the silver ring she wore and rubbed the gold chain against her pock-marked cheek.