Then we had dinner, served on several little tables, that all might eat at the same time, and the men and women ate together, but only the youngest and most beautiful woman ate at the byraktor’s table, silent and respectful, dipping her long, aristocratic fingers diffidently in the dish. I thought she was his wife, but Rexh said no, she was his son’s bride, still in those six months when she must not speak until spoken to, nor sit unless asked, and the byraktor liked her very much and wished to make her feel at home, because she was lonely for her own tribe.
After we had all washed our hands for the second time, and the men had had an after-dinner smoke—I still turned my head from the proffered cigarettes—the byraktor said that he would himself escort me to-morrow on the road to Scutari. I should ride his mule, and it was arranged that we should start at four o’clock.
CHAPTER XIV
A NIGHT BY THE BYRAKTOR’S FIRE—THE BYRAKTOR CALLS A COUNCIL—REXH TO THE RESCUE—THE BYRAKTOR’S GENDARME TEARS A PONCHO—MOONLIGHT ON THE SCUTARI PLAIN.
Then his grandmother made three beds, on three sides of the fire. She brought a two-inch-thick mat of woven straw and laid it on the floor; over it she spread a handsome blanket of goats’ hair dyed in stripes of magenta and purple; under one end of the mat she put a triangular piece of wood to serve as pillow, and when I lay down she tucked other blankets over me. Rexh and the Shala man had the other mats, and all the byraktor’s family went to their own places, leaving the big room and the dying fire to us three guests.
At four in the morning the house was astir. Out of the darkness yawning men came to stir the slumbering fire; the byraktor appeared without his turban, a weird figure with his shaven, skin-white head and long black scalplock, and began to make the morning coffee; the sheep and goats were driven out into the rain by the ragged shepherdesses. I sat up and put on my opangi, and the sleepy Rexh, still streaked with red dye from his fez, rolled out of his blankets.
“To-day,” I said, “we get to Scutari.” For the pains in my lungs had returned and I had lain all night half waking, haunted by fever visions and voices.
“Yes, yes,” said the Shala man. “I swear it! To-day we get to Scutari!” But the byraktor looked at him, saying nothing, a quizzical look in his dark eyes, and leisurely went on with his coffee making.
“Rexh,” I said at five o’clock, “why don’t they start?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Lane,” he replied, earnestly. “They will not tell.” He sat listening to every casual word, and thinking deeply. A dozen times I had suggested that we should be starting.