Mary only flushed with new anger.
"Beast, who are you that I should answer? Do as I bid you, or it will be to your hurt!"
"Truly, O Yezid," began a second Syrian, "it may be as she says. Let us ride to Aleppo."
But Yezid, who seemed the leader of the band, gave a deep curse.
"To Aleppo? We are too little loved by Redouan to risk our heads within bowshot of his executioner. Look upon the maid; she is one of the Franks, whoever she be. She will fetch a hundred purses in the market. Yet I am minded myself to possess her!"
Mary looked at the Syrian; noted his coarse, carnal eye, and the impure passion in it, and felt her heart turning to stone.
"Dear God," ran her prayer, "give me strength to bear all; for I am in the clutch of demons."
But the other five had raised a great outcry.
"Verily, O Yezid," shouted one, "you are a river of generosity. Six of us capture the maid, and you protest that she is yours alone. May Allah cut me off from Paradise if I part with my claim to her."
"And who are you, O Zubair," raged back Yezid, his teeth more catlike than ever, "to dispute my right? Am I not the chief? When we held the rich Jew without water four days since, did I not share the ransom equally? And now that we possess this maid, whose form and face fit my eye as my sword its sheath—" and as he spoke he laid his hand on Mary's bare neck, making the white flesh creep under his foul touch, and lifting the soft mass of her telltale hair. The five cut him short with one yell. "Never, insatiate one!" And Zubair added: "Let the maid be sold, and the money divided. If we may not take her to Aleppo, let us swing her across a saddle and spur away to Hamath, where there is a good market! As you have said,—a hundred purses for such an houri of the Franks. Better profit twenty fold than watching these roads, when the Christians have swept the country clean!"