Alamut Part 17

"Did you make that?" the boy asked, indicating Aidan's sword. 131.

Aidan laughed and shook his head. "You flatter me beyond my deserts. A sword is more than I shall ever aspire to; even a dagger taxes my poor skill." He drew the one he carried and held it up. "You see," he said.

The boy examined it with every evidence of an expert's eye, from fine-honed point to plain and rather worn silver hilt. "It's not bad. Well balanced; a decent edge. No nonsense about it."

Aidan welcomed it back, sheathing it. It was not displeased to be judged as it was. "You know steel," he said, returning the boy's own words.

The boy shrugged. "I know what I was taught."

"Ishak," someone explained, "was taught in the best school of all. He's a swordsmith's son."

Ishak shrugged again. "That's nothing wonderful. Ill never make a smith myself. Allah's jest on our family. I've no gift at all for the making of steel, but I seem to have the glimmer of a talent for wielding it. I can judge it, a little, but as a swordsman does, not as a smith."

His friends snorted. "Don't listen to him. He's the best swordsman in the company, and the best judge of a blade. His father is the best smith in Damascus."

That last, at least, Ishak could agree to. "He has the art from his father and his father's father, back to the first of us, who came from India. His blades are as good as any in the world."

Aidan tensed like a hound on a hot scent. He kept his voicecool, his expression mildly interested. "He must offer his wares only to kings."

Elegant young lordling though he seemed to be, Ishak had an artisan's scorn for pretty fancies. "Where's the sense in that?

Kings aren't thick on the ground here. He's not cheap, it's true, but if a man can pay, my father will give him what he's paid for."

"Surely he's much in demand."

"He has as much work as he wants to do."

Aidan nodded, smiling. "Someday I'd like to sec a blade from his forge."

"That's easy," said Ishak. "Come and visit it."

"Ah," Aidan said. "Surely-his valuable time-his secrets-"

"He's always glad to talk to a man who knows steel. Even-"

He caught himself.

Even a Frank. Aidan's smile did not waver- "Maybe I will come," he said, "one day. To talk about steel."

Ishak was delighted. "Then let it be soon! Come-" He 132 paused, struck with a thought. "Come tomorrow. I've a day's leave then. I'm with the Emir Masud; everyone knows where his house is. Meet me there after the morning prayer."

As easily as that. Aidan presented himself when and where he was bidden, and found that he was expected. He had chosen not to be a Frank today; Ishak grinned at the Arab n.o.bleman who seemed to be calling on him, and embraced him as if they had been brothers. "Sir Frank! You make a fine soldier of the Faith."

Ishak, it seemed, reserved his solemnity for strangers. He linked arms with Aidan and bore him out of the emir's house, calling farewells to his poor imprisoned comrades.

He was older than Thibaut had been, and there was not a grain of shyness in him. Yet, slight and dark and slender as he was, delighting in his possession of such a prize as Aidan, he was painrully like the boy who was gone. Even his standing in the world. He was like a squire, a youth in training for war under a knight, the Emir Masud who was the sultan*s ftiend and champion. It had been a gift, he said, a favor to a kinsman; the emir did not seem to be regretting the bargain. "My lord got a sword out of it, and my father got rid of an embarra.s.s- ment. Nine generations of smiths like no others in the world, and I had to be worthless even for shoeing horses."

"You're the only son?""As Allah willed," said Ishak, not too mournfully. "By G.o.d's good fortune, blessed be He, my father found an apprentice with every bit of the talent I lack, and he was of an age and an inclination to marry my youngest sister and get her a son. The house and the art arc safe, and I'm free to be what G.o.d or- dained me to be. G.o.d," he said as one who knew, "is very great."

"Amen," said Aidan, catching himself before he signed the cross.

Ishak skipped round a beggar, and flashed his teeth at a wh.o.r.e who was either excessively late to bed or unwontedly early to rise. "I'm not expected home till after the noonday sermon. There are places where a man can go, if a man be a Muslim . . ." His eyes danced sidelong. "Arc you a h.e.l.lion, sir Frank?"

Aidan laughed aloud. "In.nn the cradle."

Ishak clapped his hand- "Wonderful!" He tilted his head.

"You need a name. In case, ;im know ... I can't be calling 133.

you Sir Frank, or Aidan." He said it as oddly as Morgiana had.

"So, then. What shall we call you?"

"Khalid," said Aidan promptly, barely checking even after he had said it.

"Khalid," said Ishak, approving. "Friend Khalid, I do believe I like you."

It was impossible to dislike this young imp with no talent for smithing. Aidan had come for the father's sake. He was amply pleased, now, for the son's. Even if he gained no blade from this, he had gained a friend.

It was Friday, the Muslim sabbath. Therefore every true be- liever was enjoined to purify himself in the bath, the hammam that was one of the wonders of the eastern world.

Under the name Morgiana had given him, Aidan was re- minded of her as he stripped to bathe. Muslims were modest: they covered their bodies, always, from navel to knee. It served well for the concealment of an uncirc.u.mcised Frank.

They took Ishak away for the more arcane rites of the bath.

Aidan lacked the courage for them. He lingered in the outer room, watching the men who came and went, listening to their talk. He attracted hardly a glance. They were plain folk here, no princes, no beggars; solid, respectable citizens, their sons, occasionally their servants. Here he .heard pure the grace of speech that was Damascus-mincing, an Aleppan would say, with resort to the proverb: Aleppans have the tongues of men; Damascenes, of women. To which a Damascene would reply with reference to the boorishness of AJeppo.There was a lute-player in a corner, and a player on a drum, and a blind singer with a voice of that mingling of strength and purity which only eunuchs can attain. There seemed to be no words to his song, only the stream of pure notes.

"You arc civilized," said Ishak, appearing beside Aidan, smooth as an egg but for his brows and his long lashes and the tentative foray of his beard. Aidan had to labor not to starc- He was not, mercifully, the only long-haired man in the hammam.

Here and there was a Turk with his braids hanging down his back, or a curly-headed boy, or, once, an Arab with the look of the desert, tense as a wolf in a cage.

A tension which Aidan could well comprehend. He followed Ishak through the stages of the bath, strange as they were, but a wonder to his skin. He could learn very quickly to find this luxury a necessity.

134 "You have none at home?" Ishak was appalled. "What do you do?"

"Little enough," Aidan admitted. "Rivers in summer, or the sea. Water in tubs in the winter, if we insist on it; though it's said to court one's death of cold. In my city there's still a Roman bath, but we've long since lost the full rite of it. We swim in the pools. Sometimes we fire the furnace and have a festival."

Ishak shook his head, incredulous. "No hammam. I can't conceive of it."

He was still shaking his head when they came out, purified to their fingers' ends. Aidan had decided what he would do when he came home again: revive the Roman rite, or as close to it as he could manage. The priests would howl. He could hardly wait to hear them.

They would howl louder yet if they could sec him now. Full of Saracen meat and bread, beside a Saracen whelp, in a Saracen mosque. Not the Mosque of the Umayyads that was the great- est in the world, in which the sultan would p.r.o.nounce the sermon, Ishak was a man of lesser pretensions. There were half a thousand smaller mosques in Damascus: many, like this one, the gift of a rich man's piety. A court, a fountain in which the faithful cleansed themselves for prayer, a minaret from which the muezzin called them to it, and within, the wide, empty, carpeted expanse with its many hanging lamps, its carven pul- pit, and its mihrab, the niche of prayer racing south toward Mecca. No image, no icon, no shape of living thing in paint or gla.s.s or stone; not even an altar. An elder led the prayer, but he was no priest as a Christian would understand it; he merely guided where any could follow.

Aidan's back stiffened in revolt. What was he doing here?

What madness was this, this dance of standing, kneeling, grov- eling before an alien G.o.d?And he had been shocked that the Knights Hospitaller could enter a pact with the Saracen sultan. They at least kept their faith unsullied. They did not bow before Allah, even in show.

"All one has to do," Ishak had told him, "to profess Islam, is to utter with a pure heart the words of faith."

There is no G.o.d but G.o.d, and Muhammad is the Prophet of G.o.d.

No. Aidan did as Muslims did, here in their place of worship where no infidel should come, but the prayers he murmured were not the prayers of Islam. His Church had no love for such 135.

a creature as he was, but it was his Church. He would not forsake it for the preachings of a madman out of Arabia.

To be sure, it was a splendid game. Ishak's youth was infec- tious. He was, Aidan realized, a season or two older than Joanna; yet, for all of that, years younger. He was a child still, with a child's lively sense of mischief.

And he did not know what Aidan was. A Frank was alien enough; he was amply content, and quite wickedly eager to present his father with it. His father, Aidan could hope, would survive the shock.

14.

"Are you ripe for mischief?"

Sayyida almost dropped the jar of oil which she was fetching from the storeroom, Hasan, who had followed her ably on all fours, rolled to his fat rump and crowed. Morgiana swept him up, to his high delight, but her eyes were on Sayyida. "Well?"

That was utterly like her. Gone without a word for however long she pleased, then back without a word of greeting, pro- posing some new deviltry- Sayyida, for-whom the month be- tween had not been of the best, was sorely tempted. But . . .

"I can't," she said. "What will I do with Hasan?"

"Bring him with us."

"Where?"

It had slipped out, past a stronger refusal. Morgiana's eyes sparkled. "Out. To the bazaar. To the mosque. When did you last hear a Friday sermon?"

"I can't," said Sayyida, taking a firmer grip on the jar and setting off for the kitchen.

Morgiana let her deliver the oil to Fahimah and discover that she would not be needed again for yet a while. "Go," said her father's wife, who always spoiled Sayyida when Mother and Laila were not there to restrain her. "Take the baby and have a little rest in the garden."Sayyida strode out of the kitchen with fire in her eye, to meet Morgiana's wide and wicked smile. "You put a spell on her!"

136.

JwUth Tarr "I did not," said Morgiana. "Fetch your wrap, and a shawl for the baby."

There was no doubt of what Hasan would choose, if anyone happened to ask. Sayyida paid one last desperate tribute to duty and respectability. "IT1 miss Ishak when he comes."

"Ishak is not expected until after the sermon. Well be back well before him."

"You," said Sayyida, "arc a limb ofShaitan." Morgiana only laughed. Sayyida went to find her mantle.

Well and modestly swathed and veiled, a pair of women made their way to the bazaar. One carried a basket, the other a bright< p="">

Mother and Laila were very thoroughly occupied. Mother in resting for her son's arrival, Laila in calling on a friend or two.

father, unlike Maimoun, did not object to his wives' pa.s.sing the front gate, if only they were circ.u.mspect about it, and did nothing scandalous.

Sayyida put them firmly out of mind. She had not pa.s.sed the gate of the house since before she married Maimoun. Then, with the servants, she had seen to the marketing. But a married woman of good family, mother of a son, with servants at her call, did not need to set foot outside her own door. Her honor and her duty were to remain in seclusion. Maimoun had been most eloquent on the subject, when once she had asked if she could go out. "Just to take the air," she had said.

"You have the air of our garden," he replied, "which is surely sweeter than the effluvium of the streets."

Maimoun, for all his lack of family, was an educated man, and he was most conscious of the honor of this house which he had made his own. He had overridden Laila, who would hap- pily have seen Sayyida continue to be little more than a maid- servant. Mother had taken his side, which had settled the matter. Sayyida was not to go out. Shahin and Rafiq could do all that was needed of tramping about the city.

Safe in her voluminous wrapper, Sayyida did a little dance in the street. Hasan grinned at her over Morgiana's shoulder. She grinned back and ruffled his curls.

It hardly mattered to Sayyida where they went- The walls were not the walls of her house. The sun was hidden more often than not, slanting through louvers in the roofs of thestreets or making its tentative way between high walls, but it was sun that came at a different angle than that in the house. 137.

The dark, twisting, tortuous streets were a wonder and a de- light, the bazaar a dizzying marvel. She was like Hasan, discov- ering it all over again, as if it were wholly new.

They bought a sugar t.i.t for the baby, and bathed in a ham- mam that was open for that hour to women-by great good fortune, seeing no one Sayyida knew-and dawdled along the street of the cloth merchants. One could dream long and joy- ously among the silk and sendal, damask, brocade, cotton fine as spidersilk, sheer fabric of Mosul, cloth of gold and silver, turquoise, sea green, scarlet and vermilion and rose, saffron, blue, violet and royal crimson. There was silk exactly the color of Morgiana's eyes, and Damietta brocade as pure as the snow on Mount Hermon, embroidered with gold, and wool as soft and deep as sleep. Morgiana had a long and lively chaffer over a length of silk which the merchant swore had come from Ch'in, the color of flame, embroidered with dragons. When at last she consented to a price, she paid it in gold. Sayyida laughed to see the seller so visibly torn between wailing that he had been - beggared by her bargaining, and singing praises to the quality of the coin.

Sayyida folded the silk in her basket and covered it with a bit of rag. Hasan, having nursed in the hammam, was asleep on Morgiana's back. "He's never this placid for anyone else,"

Sayyida said.

"Sorcery," said Morgiana, taking the basket over Sayyida's objections and herding her past a laden donkey.

One of the greater pleasures of facing Damascus from behind a veil was that of observing the men who pa.s.sed, and not being observed in turn. The slave with bent and often shaven head, but sometimes a handsome face; the laborer under his burden; the man of substance strutting importantly about his business.

Often he would meet another who could have been his brother, stout with good feeding and well content with himself and his world.

"Peace be with you," one of them would say.

"And with you, also," the other would reply.

"And on your day prosperity," the first would continue.

"And on yours, blessing and prosperity."

Then, the ritual fulfilled, they would go their stately ways.

They were amusing, but the young men were fascinating.

Tradesmen's sons with the sweat of their labors on their fine smooth brows. Soldiers strutting as if they owned the city.

Merchant princes in the best of their fathers' wares. n.o.blemen138 JwUth Tarr mounted or afoot, with swords at their sides and bright mail on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, turbans wound about the sharp points of their helmets, fierce and haughty as eagles. Dark sknder Syrians, hawk-nosed Arabs, sleek full-checked Persians, almond-eyed Turks with their hair braided down their backs; even curly- bearded Jews, and fair Circa.s.sians, and a golden giant who was, Morgiana said, from somewhere called the Rus. No Franks, today. Sayyida had seen a Frank once. He had been as big as the Rus, but smooth-shaven, and his hair had been the color of a new copper pot. Urchins and beggars had followed him, marveling loudly at his strangeness.

The women paused to slake their thirst at a fountain which danced where two streets met. Sayyida sat on its rim to rub an aching foot. She was grievously out of training, but her wind seemed likely to hold. She slanted a glance at Morgiana, who played beast of burden without the least evidence of strain.

The ifritah had gone very still. Sayyida followed the direc- tion of her stare. At first there was nothing worth staring at, unless it were the yadi in his robes and his dignity, making his way on an errand of significance, most likely the partaking of his dinner. Then, behind him, a pair of young men arm in arm, fresh and shining as if from the bath. One was extraordinarily tall. The other was Ishak.

Sayyida's instinct gibbered at her to flee. Sense, as well as shock, held her where she was. She was a faceless shape in black, a pair of shadowed eyes, invisible.

Once the terror was in hand, it was wickedly pleasant to sit there in full sight and not be seen at all. They paused to drink as she had, keeping to the other side of the fountain, which was their only concession to the women's existence, Ishak was in high good humor. His friend was . . .