Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (9 page)

They halted before an iron-bound door in a heavy stone arch, and the Turk rapped cautiously. A voice challenged from within, and was answered in the gutturals of Turan, unintelligible to Yusuf ibn Suleyman. The door was opened, and Al Afdhal pushed into thick darkness, drawing the Moor with him. They heard the door closed behind them, then a heavy leather curtain was pulled back, revealing a lamp-lit corridor, and a scarred ancient whose fierce moustachios proclaimed the Turk.

“An old Memluk turned to wine-selling,” said Al Afdhal to the Moor. “Lead us to a chamber where we can be alone, Ahmed.”

“All the chambers are empty,” grumbled old Ahmed, limping before them. “I am a ruined man. Men fear to touch the cup, since the caliph banned wine. Allah smite him with the gout!”

Bowing them into a small chamber he spread mats for them, set before them a great dish of pistachio kernels, Tihamah raisins, and citrons, poured wine from a bulging skin, and limped away, muttering under his breath.

“Egypt has come upon evil days,” drawled the Turk lazily, quaffing deep of the Shiraz liquor. He was a tall man, leanly but strongly built, with keen black eyes that danced restlessly and were never still. His
khalat
was plain, but of costly fabric; his spired helmet was chased with silver, and jewels glinted in the hilt of his scimitar.

Over against him Yusuf ibn Suleyman presented something of the same hawk-like appearance, which is characteristic of all men who live by war. The Moor was fully as tall as the Turk, but with thicker limbs and a greater depth of chest. His was the build of the mountaineer – strength combined with endurance. Under his white
kafiyeh
his brown face showed smooth shaven, and he was lighter in complection than the Turk, the darkness of his features being more of the sun than of nature. His grey eyes in repose were cold as chilled steel, but even so there smoldered in them a hint of stormy fires.

He gulped his wine and smacked his lips in appreciation, and the Turk grinned and refilled his goblet.

“How fare the Faithful in Spain, brother?”

“Badly enough, since the Vizir Mozaffar ibn Al Mansur died,” answered the Moor. “The Caliph Hischam is a weakling. He can not curb his nobles, each of whom would set up an independent state. The land groans under civil war, and yearly the Christian kingdoms wax mightier. A strong hand could yet save Andalusia; but in all Spain there is no such strong hand.”

“In Egypt such a hand might be found,” remarked the Turk. “Here are many powerful emirs who love brave men. In the ranks of the Memluks there is always a place for a saber like yours.”

“I am neither Turk nor slave,” grunted Yusuf.

“No!” Al Afdhal’s voice was soft; the hint of a smile touched his thin lips. “Do not fear; I am in your debt, and I can keep a secret.”

“What do you mean?” The Moor’s hawk-like head came up with a jerk. His grey eyes began to smolder. His sinewy hand sought his hilt.

“I heard you cry out in the stress of the fight as you smote the black sworder,” said Al Afdhal. “You roared ‘
Santiago!
’ So shout the Caphars of Spain in battle. You are no Moor; you are a Christian!”

The other was on his feet in an instant, saber drawn. But Al Afdhal had not stirred; he reclined at ease on the cushions, sipping his wine.

“Fear not,” he repeated. “I have said that I would keep your secret. I owe you my life. A man like you could never be a spy; you are too quick to anger, too open in your wrath. There can be but one reason why you come among the Moslems – to avenge yourself upon a private enemy.”

The Christian stood motionless for a moment, feet braced as if for an attack, the sleeve of his
khalat
falling back to reveal the ridged muscles of his thick brown arm. He scowled uncertainly, and standing thus, looked much less like a Moslem than he had previously looked.

There was an instant of breathless tension, then with a shrug of his brawny shoulders, the false Moor reseated himself, though with his saber across his knees.

“Very well,” he said candidly, tearing off a great bunch of grapes with a bronzed hand and cramming them into his mouth. He spoke between mastication. “I am Diego de Guzman, of Castile. I seek an enemy in Egypt.”

“Whom?” inquired Al Afdhal with interest.

“A Berber named Zahir el Ghazi, may the dogs gnaw his bones!”

The Turk started.

“By Allah, you aim at a lofty target! Know you that this man is now an emir of Egypt, and general of all the Berber troops of the Fatimid caliphs?”

“By Saint Pedro,” answered the Spaniard, “it matters as little as if he were a street-sweeper.”

“Your blood-feud has led you far,” commented Al Afdhal.

“The Berbers of Malaga revolted against their Arab governor,” said de Guzman abruptly. “They asked aid of Castile. Five hundred knights marched to their assistance. Before we could reach Malaga, this accursed Zahir el Ghazi had betrayed his companions into the hands of the caliph. Then he betrayed us, who were marching to their aid. Ignorant of all that had passed, we fell into a trap laid by the Moors. Only I escaped with my life. Three brothers and an uncle fell beside me on that day. I was cast into a Moorish prison, and a year passed before my people were able to raise enough gold to ransom me.

“When I was free again, I learned that Zahir had fled from Spain, for fear of his own people. But my sword was needed in Castile. It was another year before I could take the road of vengeance. And for a year I have sought through the Moslem countries, in the guise of a Moor, whose speech and customs I have learned through a lifetime of battle against them, and by reason of my captivity among them. Only recently I learned that the man I sought was in Egypt.”

Al Afdhal did not at once reply, but sat scanning the rugged features of the man before him, seeing reflected in them the untamable nature of the wild uplands where a handful of Christian warriors had defied the swords of Islam for three hundred years.

“How long have you been in
al medina
?” he demanded abruptly.

“Only a few days,” grunted de Guzman. “Long enough to learn that the caliph is mad.”

“There is more to learn,” returned Al Afdhal. “Al Hakim is, indeed, mad. I say to a
Feringhi
what I dare not say to a Moslem – yet all men know it. The people, who are Sunnites, murmur under his heel. Three bodies of troops uphold his power. First, the Berbers from Kairouan, where this Shia dynasty of the Fatimids first took root; secondly, the black Sudani, who, under their general Othman yearly gain more power; and thirdly, the Memluks, or Baharites, the White Slaves of the River – Turks and Sunnites, like myself. Their emir is Es Salih Muhammad, and between him, and el Ghazi, and the black Othman, there is enough hate and jealousy to start a dozen wars.

“Zahir el Ghazi came to Egypt three years ago as a penniless adventurer. He has risen to emir, partly by virtue of a Venetian slave woman named Zaida. There is a woman behind the curtain of the caliph, too: the Arab Zulaikha. But no woman can play with Al Hakim.”

Diego set down his empty goblet and looked straight at Al Afdhal. Spaniards had not yet acquired the polished formality men later came to consider their dominant characteristic. The Castilian was still more Nordic than Latin. Diego de Guzman possessed the open bluntness of the Goths who were his ancestors.

“Well, what now?” he demanded. “Are you going to betray me to the Moslems, or did you speak truth when you said you would keep my secret?”

“I have no love for Zahir el Ghazi,” mused Al Afdhal, as if to himself, turning in his fingers the ring he had taken from the black giant. “Zaman was Othman’s dog; but Berber gold can buy a Sudani sword.” Lifting his head he returned de Guzman’s direct and challenging stare.

“I too owe Zahir a debt,” he said. “I will do more than keep your secret. I will aid you in your vengeance!”

De Guzman started forward and his iron fingers gripped the Turk’s silk-clad shoulder like a vise.

“Do you speak truth?”

“Let Allah smite me if I lie!” swore the Turk. “Listen, while I unfold my plan – ”

II

And while in the hidden wine-shop of Ahmed the Crippled a Turk and a Spaniard bent their heads together over a darksome plot, within the massive walls of El Kahira a stupendous event was coming to pass. Under the shadows of the
meshrebiyas
stole a veiled and hooded figure. For the first time in seven years, a woman was walking the streets of Cairo.

Realizing her enormity, she trembled with fear that was not inspired wholly by the lurking shadows which might mask skulking thieves. The stones hurt her feet in her tattered velvet slippers; for seven years the cobblers of Cairo had been forbidden to make street shoes for women. Al Hakim had decreed that the women of Egypt be shut up, not indeed like jewels in vaults, but like reptiles in cages.

Though clad in cast-off rags, it was no common woman who stole shuddering through the night. On the morrow the word would run through the mysterious channels of communication from
harim
to
harim
, and spiteful women lolling on satin cushions would laugh gleefully at the shame of an envied and hated sister.

Zaida, the red-haired Venetian, favorite of Zahir el Ghazi, had wielded more power than any other woman in Egypt. And now, as she stole through the night, an outcast, the thought that burned her like a white hot brand was the realization that she had aided her faithless lover and master in his climb to the high places of the world, only for another woman to enjoy the fruits of that toil.

Zaida came of a race of women accustomed to swaying thrones with their beauty and wit. She scarcely remembered the Venice from which she had been stolen as a child by Barbary pirates. The corsair who had taken her and raised her for his
harim
had fallen in battle with the Byzantines, and as a supple girl of fourteen, Zaida had passed into the hands of a prince of Crete, a languorous, effeminate youth, whom she came to twist about her pink fingers. Then, after some years, had come the raid of the Egyptian fleet on the islands of the Greeks, plunder, slaughter, fire, crashing walls and shrieks of death, a red-haired girl screaming in the iron arms of a laughing Berber giant.

Because she came of a race whose women were rulers of men, Zaida neither perished nor became a whimpering toy. Her nature was supple as the sapling which bends to the wind and is not uprooted. The time was not long when, if she never mastered Zahir el Ghazi in turn, she at least stood on equal footing with him, and because she came of a race of king-makers, she set forth to make a king of Zahir el Ghazi. The man had intelligence, super vitality, and strength of mind and body; he needed but one stimulant to his ambition. Zaida was that incentive.

And now Zahir, considering himself fully able to climb the shining rungs of the ladder without her, had cast her aside. Because Allah gave him a lust no one woman, however desirable, could wholly satisfy, and because Zaida would endure no rival – a supple Arab had smiled at the Berber, and the red-haired Venetian’s world had crashed. Zahir had stripped her and driven her into the street like a common slut, only the compassion of a slave covering her nakedness.

Engrossed in her searing thoughts, she looked up with a start as a tall hooded figure stepped from the shadows of an overhanging balcony and confronted her. A wide cloak was drawn close around him, his coif concealed the lower parts of his features. Only his eyes burned at her, almost luminous in the starlight. She cowered back with a low cry.

“A woman on the streets of
al medina
!” The voice was strange, hollow, almost ghostly. “Is this not in defiance of the command of the caliph, on whom be peace?”

“I walk not the streets by choice,
ya khawand
,” she answered. “My master has cast me forth, and I have not where to lay my head.”

The stranger bent his hooded head and stood statue-like for a space, like a brooding image of night and silence. Zaida watched him nervously. There was something gloomy and portentous about him; he seemed less like a man pondering over the tale of a chance-met slave-girl, than a sombre prophet weighing the doom of a sinful people.

At last he lifted his head.

“Come!” said he, in a voice of command rather than invitation. “I will find a place for you.” And without pausing to see if she obeyed, he stalked away up the street. She hurried after him, clutching her draggled robe about her. She could not walk the streets all night; any officer of the caliph would strike off her head for violating the edict of Al Hakim. This stranger might be leading her into slavery, but she had no choice.

The silence of her companion made her nervous. Several times she essayed speech, but his grim unresponsiveness struck her silent in turn. Her curiosity was piqued, her vanity touched. Never before had she failed so signally to interest a man. Faintly she sensed an imponderable something she could not overcome – an unnatural and frightening aloofness she could not touch. Fear began to grow on her, but she followed because she knew not what else to do. Only once he spoke, when, looking back, she was startled to see several furtive and shadowy forms stealing after them.

“Men follow us!” she exclaimed.

“Heed them not,” he answered in his weird voice. “They are but servants of Allah that serve Him in their way.”

This cryptic answer set her shuddering, and nothing further was said until they reached a small arched gate set in a lofty wall. There the stranger halted and called aloud. He was answered from within, and the gate opened, revealing a black mute holding a torch on high. In its lurid gleam the height of the robed stranger was inhumanly exaggerated.

“But this – this is a gate of the Great Palace!” stammered Zaida.

For answer the man threw back his hood, revealing a long pale oval of a face, in which burned those strange luminous eyes.

Zaida screamed and fell to her knees.
“Al Hakim!”

“Aye, Al Hakim, oh faithless and sinful one!” The hollow voice was like a knell. Sonorous and inexorable as the brazen trumpets of doom it rolled out in the night. “Oh, vain and foolish woman, who dare ignore the command of Al Hakim, which is the word of God! Who treads the street in sin, and sets aside the mandates of The Beneficent King! There is no majesty, and there is no might save in Allah, the glorious, the great! Oh, Lord of the Three Worlds, why withhold Thy levin-fire to burn her into a charred and blackened brand for all men to behold and shudder thereat!”