So these good servants took counsel.
That night also Richard and Godfrey took their counsel with Musa the Spaniard. Safe hidden in the gloom of a stall that joined the great court of the khan, which stood on the Alexandretta road without the western gate of Aleppo, they had no fear of eavesdroppers. An irksome day it had been for the two Franks. Long since, the sun had burned them bronze as many a Moor, and what with their black dyed hair and their coarse Oriental dress, none had questioned when Musa, who passed himself as a travelling Berber merchant, declared them his body-servants. But Godfrey had little Arabic. Richard's accent would soon betray. Common prudence forced them to sulk all day in the stall of the khan, while Musa went forth to make his discoveries. Now that he was back, their tongues flew fast.
"And have you seen her?" That was Richard's first question.
"Bismillah, I have; or at least two eyes bright as suns, peering from under a great cloud of veils! Recall how I made you think at Cefalu I was possessed by 'sheytans,' because of my art-magic!" answered Musa, laughing in his noiseless fashion. "Ya! When did old Jamī]l at Cordova dream, while he taught an idle student his art, that by it I would earn six dirhems and a mess of figs? I met a mountebank conjurer, bought of him his gear—wretchedly poor tricks they were,—and then found a worthy blind muezzin, in a way I will tell, to get me entrance into the very court of El Halebah. Enough; the good eunuch Hakem thought me a true welee, and brought out one of his cagelings to see my magic. I was bound to make sure she was truly Citt Mary who was pent up in the palace before you and I thrust our necks into peril; also I knew the chance of failure was less if she were warned. So I sang an incantation—in your Provençal, and clapped on to that a verse I composed before her at Palermo. When I saw her muslins and silks all a-flutter, I sang my French again, and it was more of being ready for a visit in the night than of the efreets and jinns that aid a true magician. Therefore I say this: All is ready. To-night the Star of the Greeks says farewell to Iftikhar or—"
But Musa repeated no alternative.
"And the way of escape?" asked Godfrey. "By St. Nicholas of Ghent, this is no bachelor's adventure!"
Musa laughed again.
"Verily, as says Al Koran, 'No soul knoweth what it shall suffer on the morrow, but Allah knoweth;' nevertheless, so far as human wit may run, much is prepared. Understand, Cid Godfrey, that Iftikhar has sent away from El Halebah the greater part of his Ismaelian devotees to join the force of Kerbogha. About the palace lie two hundred at most; a few stand sentry upon the road from Aleppo, a few more lie in the palace; but nearly all have their barrack in the wood beside the Kuweik, some distance northward."
"St. George!" swore the Duke, "how discover all this? Can you see through walls as through Greek glass?"