In the whole of Africa, no monarch, not even the Moorish Lord of the Land of the Maghrib, was housed so luxuriously as this half-negro conqueror of the Asben. When first I entered the Fada as slave, I was struck by the magnificence of the wonderful domain. As I crossed court after court, each more beautiful than the one before, and each devoted to a separate department of the royal household, the guards, the janissaries, the treasurer, the armourers, and the eunuchs, I was amazed at every turn by their magnificence and beauty. At last we came to the court of the Grand Vizier, a smaller but prettier place, with a cool, plashing fountain tiled in blue and white, and shaded by figs, myrtles, and trailing vines. Beyond, I could see an arched gateway in the black wall, before which stood two giant negro guards in bright blue, their drawn swords flashing in the sun. Of my conductor I enquired whither that gate led, and was told it was impassable to all save the Sultan himself, for it was the gate of the Courts of Love, the entrance to the royal harem.
Through the many months during which I served my capricious master, that closed, iron-studded door, zealously guarded night and day by its mute janissaries with their curved scimitars, was a constant source of mystery to me. Often I sat in the courtyard and dreamed of the thousand terrible dramas which that ponderous door hid from those outside that world of love, hatred, and all the fiercest passions of the human heart. The Sultan was fickle and capricious. The favourite of to-day was the discarded of to-morrow. The bright-eyed houri who, loaded with jewels, could twist her master round her finger one day, was the next the merest harem slave, compelled to wash the feet of the woman who had succeeded her in her royal master’s favour. Truly the harem of the Sultan of the Ahir was a veritable hotbed of intrigue, where ofttimes the innocent victims of jealousy were cast alive to the wild beasts, or compelled to partake of the Cup of Death—coffee wherein chopped hair had been placed—a draught that was inevitably fatal.
One brilliant night, when the silver moonbeams whitened the court wherein I lived, I sat in the deep shadow of the oleanders, sad and lonely. Through six long dreary months had I been held slave by the Grand Vizier, yet it was Allah’s will that I should have no opportunity to return to my people. So I possessed myself in patience. Through those months mine eyes and ears had been ever on the alert, and long ago I had completed my investigations. Suddenly my reflections were interrupted, for I saw standing before me a veritable vision of beauty, a pale-faced girl in the gorgeous costume of the harem, covered with glittering jewels, and wearing the tiny fez, pearl-embroidered zouave, and filmy serroual of the Sultan’s favourites. Not more than eighteen, her unveiled countenance was white as any Englishwoman’s; her startled eyes were bright as the moonbeams above, and as she stood mute and trembling before me, her bare, panting bosom, half-covered by her long, dark tresses, rose and fell quickly. I raised my eyes, and saw that the negro guards were sleeping. She had escaped from the Courts of Love.
“Quick!” she gasped, terrified. “Hide me, while there is yet time.”
At her bidding I rose instantly, for her wondrous beauty held me as beneath some witch’s spell. And at the same time I led the way to my tiny den, a mere hole in the gigantic wall that separated the royal harem from the outer courts of the palace.
“My name is Zohra,” she explained, when she had entered; “and thine?”—she paused for an instant, looking me straight in the face. “Of a verity,” she added at length, “thine is Ahamadou, the spy of the dreaded Azjar, the Veiled Men.”
I started, for I had believed my secret safe.
“What knowest thou of me?” I gasped eagerly.
“That thou hast risked all in order to report to thy people upon the Black Sultan’s strength,” she answered, sinking upon my narrow divan, throwing back her handsome head and gazing into my eyes. “But our interests are mutual. I have these ten months been held captive, and desire to escape. By bribing one of the slaves with the Sultan’s ring I contrived to have poison placed in the kouss-kouss of the guards—”
“You have killed them!” I cried, peering forth, and noticing the ghastly look upon their faces as they slept at their posts.