So Mary kissed the ring, folded her hands, and at last was dreaming.
CHAPTER XXX
HOW THERE WAS FESTIVAL AT ALEPPO
After the winter rains were past, and when all the birds were singing in the groves about El Halebah, Mary Kurkuas could see that Iftikhar Eddauleh was waxing restive in soul; both on her account and on account of something which was stirring in that great world which lay beyond the palm trees, the lake, and the silver Kuweik. What those events without were Mary could scarce guess, for had she been transported into another planet, she could not have seen less of what passed in the realm of armies, and princes, and battles. The moment the enchanted groves of the palace closed about her, all beyond had been blotted out; she saw no men save Iftikhar, Zeyneb, and Hakem with his fellow-eunuchs, if these last were indeed men. Once she had asked Hakem whether the Crusaders had been driven back when they strove to cross Asia Minor, and whether the expedition to Jerusalem had been abandoned. The sleek creature had only salaamed, and smirked deprecatingly.
"O Rose of the Christians, my ears are deaf, my eyes blind to all beyond the precincts of El Halebah!" was his sole reply. Zeyneb she loathed from the depths of her soul. The dwarf saw her seldom, although he affected to seek the company of his foster-sister. Mary induced Morgiana to ask him to tell of the outside world, and was met by a blank refusal. "Let him twitter once, and Iftikhar would lift his head from his shoulders!" As for Iftikhar, when Mary demanded to know the success of the Crusade, he replied with one of his flashes of mingled authority and passion: "Soul of my Soul! ask me nothing. My lips are sealed, save when I speak of the love that burns me and of the brightness that blazes from your eyes!" And no appeal could draw from him more. Once during the autumn Mary thought she saw from the uppermost balcony a squadron of armed horsemen riding furiously from Aleppo. That day too she heard one negro eunuch say to a fellow, "Allah grant that they come no nearer!" and the other, "As you love life, breathe nothing to your own soul! If the Citt, Mary, should hear!" But this was all. Day sped into day. No change in the monotonous ease and routine of the harem. Mary had grown wonted to the unending round. She no longer lay awake to hear the muezzins. Sometimes she wondered if she would forget her Greek and her French, hearing only Arabic, save when she talked with Eleanor.
Eleanor had been held as captive by Iftikhar, not because he had any unwonted passion for her, or grudge against her; but she was beautiful, and he liked to feel that he held one of the Longswords in his harem. The young Norman had long since bowed her head to her fate. After a manner she had been kindly treated. Less full of energy and unquenchable vigor than the Greek, she had grown content to stay all day in the harem, bathing in the perfumed waters, embroidering, drinking sherbet. Morgiana, seeing she was not likely to become a rival, had patronized and protected her against the insolence of the eunuchs. Mary had been greeted by Eleanor rapturously, as if she were an angel. As for Morgiana, the "maid of Yemen" was alternately to her sister and fury. For days together she would have never a word for Mary save an occasional malediction or threat; then without warning she would repent in tears, implore forgiveness, become gentle, loving, clinging as Eleanor; and so until the next cloud of jealousy came over her.
It was one day in the early springtime when the eunuchs spread canopies on the palace roof. Here, with the green groves stretching on every hand, the three women had idled out the warm, sweet afternoon. Mary was aiding Eleanor over her embroidery frame. And now it was that Morgiana told what she had never told before—the story of how she fell into the hands of Iftikhar. "Know, O sweet sister," said she, laying down the guitar on which her long, shapely fingers had been wandering, "that I am the daughter of Jaafar bin Shirzâd, who was the Hajib, that is, Lord Chamberlain, to the Commander of the Faithful, Al Muktadi the Abbasside, and that I was born in my father's palace which lay by the Tigris in Bagdad. My father had four wives and many fair female slaves, fair as moons; but most of all he loved my mother, Kharka, who was peerless among the women of Bagdad. She was the daughter of Abu Ahmed, emir of the free desert tribes of Yemen. From her I gain my name; from her my blue eyes, which are found sometimes among the Arabs of the great waste. My mother was brought up after the fashion of her people; not pent in harems, guarded by eunuchs, but free as youth—would to Allah this were the custom in all Islam! From her love of freedom comes my own proneness to rush to unwomanly things. At Bagdad my mother pined for her native sand plains, and died when I was young, leaving me to my nurse,—mother of my accursed foster-brother, Zeyneb. Then came the direful day when my father lost his head by demand of Melik Shah, the arch-sultan; and I and all his harem were plunged in slavery. I was sixteen when I and Zeyneb stood in the slave market at Damascus. At Iftikhar's first sight of me unveiled, the love sprang to his eyes as flame leaps on a torch. He bought us; and for years he and I were to each other as two souls in one body; the thought of him, joy! sight of him, joy! touch of him, joy! So he to me. And in love for me he cast all the other women from his harem. Then—luckless day!—he went to Sicily to find service among the Christians. There at Palermo I was mother of his child; merciful Allah! why couldst Thou not spare my little Ali? But he died—sorrow passing words! After that I saw that Iftikhar was drifting away from me. First he bought other slave women, though still he gave me chief place, and love of the lips. Then on a day"—and Morgiana's eyes seemed fiery daggers searching Mary's very soul—"I heard Hakem, chief eunuch, speak of the beauty of Mary the Greek; then I first heard your name, and learned to curse you! Aye, curse you, as I have a thousand times since. Since that hour, day by day, despite my wiles, and my beauty, and my sorrow, unceasingly he has drifted from me farther and farther; and now he has you—your body already, when he wills; your soul, too, full soon. And I have lost him; have lost him forever!"
Mary raised her head to reply; but Morgiana swept on: "Oh, it is not the pain of seeing another mistress of El Halebah; of knowing I am second when I should be first; of feeling, 'One whisper from the Greek, and at her wish Iftikhar would slay me.' But I love him. To possess him, though clothed in rags and loaded with fetters—enough! To hear him say, 'I love you,' as once he did, and know that it was not tongue but eyes also that spoke—that were my paradise!"
Morgiana bowed her head, and broke into wild sobbing. The Greek put her arm about her.