“And with you be peace!” The Sheik’s voice was like distant thunder. He carried a large basket. The seller of vegetables received him respectfully, if less cordially than Ali. The Sheik cast a critical eye over the vegetables, then laid his hand on a bunch of young carrots, a string of fresh onions, some ruby radishes and some long green beans. Whatever he touched, the dealer put into his basket, saying, “Take it,” each time more faintly.
“God increase thy goods!” said the Sheik, when he had considerably diminished them by half filling his own basket.
“And thy goods, also,” answered the dealer cheerfully, as the old man pottered off to the butcher’s, next door.
“He is holy man,” said Ali; “they all give to him.”
The butcher’s gifts—a skinned sheep’s head, with awful staring eyes, and other gruesome things, were too horrid to look at. We waited till the Sheik passed on to the bread sellers, a group of white shrouded women sitting against a wall. They were as carefully veiled as if they had been young and lovely ladies. Each had a cushion before her with flat loaves of bread. When the middle one gave the Sheik a loaf, there was the rattle of bangles, and a glimpse of a hand that might have belonged to the Cumaean sibyl.
Outside the market, in the midst of the mad hurly-burly, there appeared an incarnation of that Oriental calm we had begun to believe the Moors had left behind them in Cordova. Down the middle of an evil-smelling lane, a man on horseback rode slowly towards us. The squalling crowd made way for him, flattening itself against the wall.
“Welcome!” said Ali, as the stranger passed in the odor of sandalwood.
“Twice welcome,” answered the horseman. He was fairer than many Spaniards; his brown beard and moustache were beautifully combed and curled, he had a high aquiline nose, eyes like dark jewels, thin pencilled eyebrows. He was dressed all in white; his sulham of finest wool had a silk braid round the edge, and tassel hanging from the hood drawn over his head. He turned his horse to avoid us. Except for that slight motion of laying the reins against the animal’s neck—the action showed a slim brown hand with an ancient turquoise ring—he gave no sign of having seen us. It is a sign of Arab as of British breeding, not to look too much at strangers.
“That was an Arab gentleman,” said J.
“Now I know just how Abd-er Rahman looked!” murmured Patsy.