It was an enlightened custom in Mohammedan countries to examine into the mental condition of insane people at regular intervals. Rabbi Benjamin, of Tudela, the Spanish Jew, tells us that, in the sixth decade of the Twelfth Century, he found Commissioners in lunacy at Baghdad; although he also speaks of that barbarous practice of chaining the madman which obtained in England until some centuries later. Two Mohammedan Ascetics, who dwelt in the mountains as hermits, were brought to the prison to determine whether Varthema might be a person bereft of mere mundane reason through his exceptional sanctity, or only ordinarily mad. The hermits took opposite views on this knotty question, and spent an hour in violently contradicting one another. The prisoner lost all patience and, anxious to be quit of them, put a stop to the discussion by the simple device which Gulliver employed to extinguish the conflagration at Lilliput. “Whereupon,” says he, “they ran off crying ‘he is mad; he is no saint.’ The queen and her maidens saw all this, for they were looking on from their casement, and burst into laughter, vowing that ‘by God, by the head of the Prophet, there is no one in the world like this man.’”
Next day Varthema followed this up by laying hold of the gaoler by those two horns or tufts of hair which were then, as now, fashionable in Arabia, kneeling on his stomach, and so belabouring him that he “left him for dead,” like the Jew. The queen was again vastly entertained, and called out: “Kill those beasts.”
But it was discovered that, all this time, Varthema’s fellow-prisoners had been digging a hole through the prison wall, and, moreover, had contrived to get free from their shackles. The Sultan’s deputy was fully aware of the favour with which the Sultana regarded Varthema; and the lady knew him to be ready to carry out her commands. She ordered the prisoner to be kept in irons, but to be removed into a doorless lower chamber of the palace, and to be provided with a good bed, good food and perfumed baths. For, as the reader will guess, she had fallen in love with the captive. Sexual love among Arabians is anything but a refined or spiritual passion; and the harem has not been found precisely a temple of chastity anywhere,—mainly, perhaps, because it is a harem. And this lady possessed a temperament as sanguine and scandalous as any Messalina or Faustina or Empress of all the Russias. Alas! Fate doomed her to bloom unseen in Arabia, and waste her sweetness on its desert air. At the end of a few days, she started by bringing Varthema some dainty dish in the dead of night. He tells us how, “coming into my chamber, she called ‘Jonah! Come. Are you hungry?’ ‘Yes, by Allah!’ I replied; and I rose to my feet and went to her in my shirt. And she said: ‘No, no, not with your shirt on.’ I answered: ‘O Lady, I am not mad now’; whereto she: ‘By Allah, I know you never were mad. In the world there is no man like you.’ So, to please her, I took off my shirt, holding it before me for the sake of decency; and thus did she keep me for a space of two hours, gazing at me as if I had been a nymph, and making her plaint to God in this wise: ‘O Allah! Thou hast made this man white as the sun. Me, Thou hast made black. O Allah! O Prophet! my husband is black; my son is black; this man is white. Would that this man might become my husband! And while speaking thus, she wept and sighed continuously, and kept passing her hands over me all the time, and promising that she would make the Sultan remove my irons when he returned.’
“Next night the queen came with two of her damsels, and said, ‘Come hither, Jonah.’ I replied that I would come. ‘Would you like me to come and stay a little while with you,’ she asked. I answered, ‘no, lady. I am in chains; and that is enough.’ Then she said, ‘Have no fear. I take it all on my own head. If you do not want me, I will call Gazelle, or Tajiah, or Gulzerana to come instead.’ She spoke thus because she was working to come herself. But I never gave way; for I had thought it all out.”
Varthema had no desire to remain in Yemen, even should he mount its throne,—a far less likely event than discovery and a horrible death. “I did not wish to lose both my soul and my body,” he writes. “I wept all night, commending myself to God.”
“Three days after this the Sultan returned, and straightway the queen sent to tell me that, if I would stay with her, she would make me rich.”
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Varthema is the man to mould circumstances to his will: no web, however cunningly woven shall hold him prisoner; his keen wit is ready to comply with the Sultana’s request, if she will have his fetters struck off.
The lady fell into the trap. She manifests the clever, feminine guile of the harem in her dealings with Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, but she is no match for Varthema. The Sultan is a strong man and a mighty man of valour; but he is uxorious, and as wax in her hands. She ordered the prisoner to be brought at once before the Sultan and herself. Ibn Abd-el-Wahâb, good easy man, asked Varthema whither he desired to go if he should choose to release him. The mendacious Italian replied: “‘O Lord, I have neither father nor mother; wife nor child; brother nor sister; only Allah, the Prophet, and you. You give me food, and I am your slave.’ And I wept without ceasing.” Then the artful Sultana reminded the Sultan that he would have to account to God, of whose anger he should beware, for having kept an innocent man so long time in prison. Abd-el-Wahâb proved as unsuspicious and benevolent as history declares him to have been; yet he was as firm and able as a ruler as he was bold and experienced in arms. His Sultana knew how to play on his merits and convert them into defects. He at once granted Varthema liberty to go whithersoever he chose. “And, immediately, he had my irons struck off; and I knelt before him; and kissed his feet and the hands of the queen. She took me by the hand, saying: ‘Come with me, poor wight, for I know thou art dying of hunger.’ When I was with her in her chamber, she kissed me more than a hundred times; and then she gave me excellent food. But I had seen her speak privily to the Sultan, and I thought she had begged me from him for a slave. Wherefore, I said: ‘I will not eat, unless you promise me my freedom.’ She replied: ‘Be silent, madman. You know not what Allah will bestow. If you are good, you shall be an Emir.’ Now, I knew what kind of lordship she desired to bestow on me; so I answered that she should let me get into fitter condition; for fear filled me with other than amorous thoughts. She replied: ‘By Allah, you say well. I will give you eggs, fowls, pigeons, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and cocoa-nuts every day.’[17] So, at these good words and promises, I plucked up heart a bit. To restore me to health, I stayed fifteen or twenty days in the palace. One day, she sent for me and asked if I would go a-hunting with her; which offer I refused not; and, at our return, feigned me to fall sick by reason of weakness; and so continued for the space of eight days; during which time she was unceasing in sending persons to visit me. One day, I sent to tell her that I had vowed to God and Mohammed to visit a holy man at Aden, who was reputed to work miracles.”
We may not count meanness among the petits défauts of this lady of spacious passions. She was “well pleased” with Varthema’s suggestion, and provided him with a camel and twenty-five golden ducats—a sum which would go a long way in Arabia. We shall see presently to what use he applied it. Eight days’ journeying brought him to the holy man of Aden; and the second day after his arrival, he professed that he was cured. He wrote to the Sultana that, since Allah had been so merciful, he wished to see the whole of her kingdom. “This I did because the fleet which was there could not set sail again for a month. I spoke with a skipper in secret, and told him I wished to go to India, and would give him a handsome present if he would take me. He replied that he wished to touch at Persia first.” Nothing better could have fallen in with Varthema’s wishes. Meanwhile he would explore Arabia Felix.