A Wind in Cairo (24 page)

Zamaniyah slid her bow from its casing, drew out the coiled string.

Someone shouted near her, deep and sudden. Khamsin started. She snatched rein.

The Franks were moving, milling.

She thrust the bow between thigh and saddle, snapped straight the string.

Stopped.

The ranks of steel had blurred, wavered, shrunk.

A roar went up. They were retreating. Fleeing. Ordered, deliberate, imposing even in their cowardice.

Drums and cymbals loosed a wing of whooping pursuers. Shouts and laughter sped them on their way. An arrow or two flew, mocking.

Zamaniyah sat her startled stallion and loosed a slow breath. She wanted to be relieved. She was—though she hated herself—disappointed. So much fear and so much fretting, and a ride like a storm rising, and all for nothing. The terrible Frank had turned craven and slunk away.

One did not need a great battle to win a great victory. The sultan camped outside of Hama; and as the sun went down, his army's joy went up.

They had a prisoner or three for their amusement: Franks whose horses had failed them, or whose ire had held them when all their fellows fled. Some had even tried to fight.

The sultan had forbidden cruelty. These were guests, he decreed; honored prisoners. Some knew decent manners, and Arabic or Turkish with them. Others, scowling savages out of darkest Francia, seemed set on proving every scurrilous tale that anyone had ever told of them.

Even in her tent Zamaniyah could hear the voices about her father's fire. One of the Syrian emirs had come with a handful of rowdy young men, all of them gagging in unison. “Ahmad has himself a Frank,” the emir explained. His voice was young, and rippling with mirth. “Eee, the stink! I swear by the Prophet's beard, the man hasn't seen a washing since the midwife pulled him yelling from the womb.”

“That's Franks for you,” said another, older but no less merry. “Do you know, they sew themselves into their shirts at summer's end, and cut themselves out when summer begins again?”

“What do they do between?”

“Go naked, of course!”

Laughter ran round the circle.

“Ah now,” said the young emir, “it's not as bad as that. The ones who've been here a while, they pick up a bit of civilization here and there.”

“A bit,” the older man agreed. “But sometimes, barely enough. My cousin's a rich man: he owns a fair number of bathhouses in one of the towns near Antioch. He tells of a Frank who used to come to one of them—Franks will tell you that bathing is a deathly danger to a man's health, but they'll make exceptions for our kind of baths. This Frank I'm speaking of was almost as regular in his bathing as a Muslim, but being a Frank, he knew nothing of modesty; he never covered his loins while he bathed.

“One day he grew curious, or maybe he thought it a fine jest to mock a Muslim's decency. He snatched the attendant's loincloth and tossed it clean out the door.

“Salim the bathman kept his dignity. The Frank, I'm told, goggled like an idiot. ‘What's this?' he said. ‘What's this you have?'

“Salim, who had no more or less than any man has, took a moment to find an answer. It was obvious enough, of course, upon reflection. He explained, with what composure he could muster, what use we Muslims make of razor and stripping-paste.

“The Frank was astonished. ‘Splendid!' he cried. ‘Magnificent! Will you do the same for me?'

“Salim obliged him. He had, my cousin says, a veritable beard between his legs. When it was gone he felt how smooth it was, and laughed. ‘We shave our faces,' he said. ‘You shave below. I think you have the better of the two.' Then he leaped up with his jewels still in his hand and went laughing out.

“A little later he came back. He had a woman with him, a brazen unveiled Frank. He brought her right into the baths, in that hour when no woman was permitted; and she staring about with no shame at all. He led her to poor Salim, laid her naked on the table, and said, ‘What you did for me, do for my lady.'”

“And did he?” the young emir asked when the laughter had died down.

“Certainly,” the older man answered. “And was paid handsomely for it, too. It was good day's work, my cousin said.”

Zamaniyah pulled the blanket over her head. It muffled the voices, a little. It did nothing for her blushes.

The flow of talk had shifted, ebbed. They were rising one by one, saying farewells, straggling to their beds.

She knew when her father sought his tent. He had companions: the young emir and the older man who had told the tale of the Frank. Some quality of the air or of her weary ears brought their voices clearly to her. She caught the emir's name: Abd al-Rahim. He held a fief close by Damascus; he was, the older man indicated with delicacy surprising after what she had heard of him by the fire, of an old family, well connected, with excellent prospects.

The emir had remarkably little to say for himself. The other man was saying it all.

Zamaniyah found herself well outside of her blanket, and wide awake. Abd al-Rahim was shaping into a paragon of virtue, beauty, and piety. Al-Zaman was allowing it with, it seemed, perfect patience. Was the boy so highly placed, then? But if that were so, why did he need to curry al-Zaman's favor?

She crept from her mat and pressed her ear to the wall.

“Why do you come to me tonight?” al-Zaman was asking, quite amiably still, but in a tone that bade them cease their circling and come to the point.

“Opportunity,” the spokesman answered, “and long desire that comes at last to the end of its diffidence; the stars are auspicious for us all.”

“Indeed,” said al-Zaman.

There was a pause. Perhaps the emir whispered to the other. At length the man said, “My lord is modest, lord commander, and not given to presumption; but the desire of his heart drives him beyond his wonted bounds. Therefore he comes to you. He begs the honor of your regard. He cries his pardon if he taxes your patience.”

“He does not,” said al-Zaman. “Yet.”

Someone swallowed audibly. Perhaps it was Abd al-Rahim. The other said as steadily as ever, “Lord commander, my lord asks your indulgence. He is scarcely himself. His eyes are dazzled; his heart is smitten. He is, in a word, in love.”

“Indeed,” purred al-Zaman.

“My lord.” That was the emir himself, swift and breathless and somewhat muffled, as if he had flung himself to the carpet. “My lord, I love her with all my heart. My dreams are full of her. My waking is alight with her. My lord, if I might have your leave—even to think of aspiring to her—of taking your daughter as my wife—”

Zamaniyah fell backward. Her hands were clapped over her mouth. Her heart was like to leap out of her breast.

She could still hear him through the drumbeat of her pulse. “My lord, today I saw her in the line of battle, all bright and splendid; and I knew, I knew surely, that I must speak to you. You may strike me. You may cast me out. I will not stop you. I know I am not worthy of her; but surely, my lord, surely I may dream?”

“You may dream,” said al-Zaman.

“Oh, my lord!” The young man's voice was trembling. “My lord, you have shown me the face of joy.”

“You may dream,” al-Zaman repeated. “I promise you nothing.”

“It is enough,” said Abd al-Rahim

.

“Mistress?”

She looked into the shadow that was Jaffar's face. “He's not talking about me. Is he? He thinks I'm someone else.”

“I doubt that, mistress,” he said.

She let him put her to bed again. It was easier than fighting. “He doesn't want me,” she said. “He wants my dowry, or my father's power, or my favor with the sultan. Real people don't swoon for love the way they do in stories. And even if they did, how could anyone swoon for me?”

“It's not as hard as you might think,” said Jaffar.

She gaped at him. Then, shakily, she laughed. “It is a good joke, isn't it? Who'd ever have thought this would happen?”

Jaffar said nothing.

She curled on her side and yawned. Her eyes were pricking. She refused, fiercely, to weep. “I wonder,” she said. “I wonder what he looks like.”

Jaffar knelt by her until she slept. He had seen the tears she refused to shed. He had said none of the things he could have said. And some he should, if he had been as good a servant as he pretended.

He had seen the hopeful suitor. A comely young man, well spoken of both in war and in council, well versed in manners and in courtesy. Altogether a perfect nobleman, and no hypocrite. Jaffar had watched him watch Zamaniyah. If his passion was pretense, it was surpassingly well played.

It tore at Jaffar. The man's perfect suitability, which al-Zaman could not but see. The lady's conviction that it was all a seeming, or a cruel jest. And Jaffar was glad that she felt so. Glad that she held herself so low, that she could see in honest desire only the merchant's calculation: that she had no innocence, nor any hope. It racked her with pain, and he rejoiced, because he need not lose her to any man.

And why not? he demanded of himself. Any man who took her would insist that she be a woman. Would veil her, seclude her, set his will and his seal upon her. And she would allow it; and it would kill her. She thought herself a sparrow forced to fly as a falcon. She did not know that she was an eagle.

She must not yield. This trouble of hers was youth, womanhood waking and waxing insistent. It would ease. He—

He knotted about his middle. He could ease her. He who loved her. He who would never give her the pain of a child.

Painfully he drew himself erect. “No,” he whispered. That way was madness. She loved him; she had the eyes to see that he was beautiful. She would accept what he had to give, would believe sincerely that she was glad of it. But it would not be enough. She would want more; and suffer for the wanting; and end in desolation.

Better that she go on as she had begun. Through the inspired madness of her father, she had what no woman should dare to hope for. She was accepted as a man. She commanded loyalty; she had the sultan's goodwill. She could be a great power, herself, untrammeled by any will but her own.

In this world?

Why not? Already she had wrought the impossible: won a place in the army of Islam, simply by being present and doing her duty and asking no man's indulgence. They had accepted her before they knew it. Whatever she did hereafter, the way was laid. She had only to set her foot upon it.

Jaffar lay by her. She stirred uneasily, dreaming. He stroked her hair. She sighed, stilled. He closed his eyes.

The Franks had drawn back well beyond their own borders, shut themselves in their mighty fortress of Krak and there defied their pursuers. Empty defiance. They had accomplished nothing in all their riding but empty shame.

The sultan had won more than an easy victory. The army of Mosul had come to Aleppo. He was free of that trap; free to choose the ground of battle, if battle there must be.

Zamaniyah noticed. It was impossible not to. But her mind could not center upon it. There was Abd al-Rahim. And there was Wiborada.

The Frank was gone. It came on slowly, that fact. That fist night before Hama, she had gone, she said, to al-Zaman's tent. That none of the men in their conference had spoken of her, Zamaniyah at first had not stopped to wonder at. A woman in a warrior's tent was invisible, like the bed and the carpets.

Had she ever been there at all? Al-Zaman had not come looking for her. In the morning she had not been among Zamaniyah's mamluks. Zamaniyah had forborne to fret. Her mind was otherwise occupied; and Wiborada hardly conducted herself like a loyal slave. She liked to wander.

Anxiety grew slowly. A Frankish prisoner brought it to bloom. He was doing nothing, simply sitting in front of a tent, sneering at men who passed, looking filthy and lice-ridden and most appallingly seared by the sun. He was simply there, a Frank, with eyes nigh as blue as Wiborada's.

And Zamaniyah knew.

She refused it. She hunted in all the places a mamluk could be, and a few in which one should not. Her own soldier-slaves had nothing to tell her. They did not know where the lioness was: that was what they called her, though the boy who let it slip went scarlet and would say nothing thereafter. None of them had seen her since the night of the victory.

Wiborada had kept her belongings in a box in Zamaniyah's tent. The box was there; it seemed untouched. It held her armor, her sword, changes of linen and clothing, even, wrapped carefully and laid beneath the rest, the silken garments of a concubine.

She could not have gone naked. She must have gone unarmed, unless she had taken a dagger. She was no archer, to have owned a bow, or stolen one. She had vanished like a Jinniyah in a story.

Zamaniyah lowered the lid; rose; strode toward the flap.

Jaffar barred her way. She scowled at him. He could not stand even in the tent's peaked center; here at its side he stooped low over her, motionless, expressionless. “No,” he said.

“No, what?” she snapped.

“No. Don't go after her. She's made her choice.”

“She'll get herself killed!”

“Are you certain?” he asked. “Those are her own people. She's noble born; her father was a high lord among them. She can win them with her face and hold them with the pathos of her story.”

Zamaniyah's head shook. She could see it, and yet she could not. “She'll be casting her wager on it. Maybe if she can find her way into a lord's protection; and their priests give sanctuary, don't they? But what if she can't? Those are savages out there, eating our bread and cursing their captivity. What would they do to a woman alone, unarmed, dressed as one of us? And a man of us at that, if I know Wiborada. I have to find her. I have to get her back.”

“She's been gone at least a day and a night. Whatever they would have done to her, they'll have done long since.”