Khaled, A Tale of Arabia Part 16

But Almasta remained where she was, weeping and beating her forehead.

'Let me stay!' she cried. 'Let me stay, for I love you. I will eat the dust under your feet. Only let me stay.'

'I think not,' Khaled answered. 'You weary Zehowah with your silence and your sullenness.'

'Let me stay!' she repeated, over and over again.

She was not making any pretence of grief, for the tears ran down abundantly and stained the red leather of Khaled's shoes. Though he was hard-hearted he was not altogether cruel, for a man who loves one woman greatly is somewhat softened towards all such as do not stand immediately in his way.

'It is true,' he thought, 'that I have given this woman some occasion of hope, for I have treated her kindly during many days, and she has probably supposed that I would marry her. For she is less keen-sighted than Zehowah, and moreover she loves me.'

'Do not drive me out!' cried Almasta. 'For I shall die if I cannot see your face. What have I done?'

'You have indeed done nothing worthy of death, for I cannot prove that you killed Abdul Kerim. I will therefore give you a good husband and you shall be happy.'

But Almasta would not go away, and embracing his knees she looked up into his face, imploring him to let her remain. Khaled could not but see that she was beautiful, for the mid-day light fell upon her white face and her red lips, and made shadows in her hair of the colour of mellow dates, and reflections as bright as gold when the burnisher is still in the goldsmith's hand. Though he cared nothing for Almasta and little for her sorrow, his eye was pleased and he smiled.

Then he looked up and saw Zehowah standing before him, just as she had come from the bath, wrapped in loose garments of silk and gold. He gazed at her attentively for there was a distant gleam of light in her eyes and her cheeks were warm, though she stood in the shadow, so that he thought she had never been more beautiful, and he did not care to look at Almasta's face again.

'Why is Almasta lamenting in this way?' Zehowah asked.

'She desires to stay in the palace,' Khaled answered; 'but I have told her that she shall be married, and yet she wishes to stay.'

'Let her be married quickly, then. Is she a free woman, that she should resist, or is she rich that she should refuse alms? Let her be married.'

'There is a certain young man, cousin to Abdul Kerim, a Bedouin of pure descent. Let him take her, if he will, and let the marriage be celebrated to-morrow.'

But Almasta shook her head, and her tears never ceased from flowing.

'You will marry him,' said Khaled. 'And if any harm comes to him, I will cause you to be put to death before the second call to prayer on the following morning.'

When Almasta heard this, her tears were suddenly dried and her lips closed tightly. She rose from the floor and retired to a distance within the room.

On that day Khaled sent for the young man of whom he had spoken, whose name was Abdullah ibn Mohammed el Herir, and offered him Almasta for a wife. And he accepted her joyfully, for he had heard of her wonderful beauty, and was moreover much gratified by being given a woman whom the former Sultan would probably have married if he had lived. Khaled also gave him a grey mare as a wedding gift, and a handsome garment.

The marriage was therefore celebrated in the customary manner, and no harm came to Abdullah. But as the autumn had now set in, he soon afterwards left the city, taking Almasta with him, to live in tents, after the manner of the Bedouins.

CHAPTER VIII

Abdullah ibn Mohammed, though a young man, was now the sheikh of a considerable tribe which had frequently done good service to the late Sultan, Zehowah's father, and which had also borne a prominent part in the recent war. Abdul Kerim, whom Almasta had murdered, had been the sheikh during his lifetime, and if the claims of birth had been justly considered, his son, though a mere boy, should have succeeded him. But Abdullah had found it easy to usurp the chief place, and in the council which was held after Abdul Kerim's death he was chosen by acclamation.

It chanced, too, that he was not married at the time when he took Almasta, for of two wives the one had died of a fever during the summer, and he had divorced the other on account of her unbearable temper, having been deceived in respect of this by her parents, who had a.s.sured him that she was as gentle as a dove and as submissive as a lamb. But she had turned out to be as quarrelsome as a wasp and as unmanageable as an untrained hawk, so he divorced her, and the more readily because she was not beautiful and her dower had been insignificant. Almasta therefore found that she was her husband's only wife.

She would certainly have killed him, as she had killed Abdul Kerim, and, indeed, the late Sultan, in the hope of being taken back into the palace, but she was prevented by the fear of death, for she had seen that Khaled's threat was not empty and would be executed if harm came to Abdullah after his marriage. She accordingly set herself to please him, and first of all she learned to speak the Arabic language, in order that she might sing to him in his own tongue and tell him tales of distant countries, which she had learned in her own home.

Abdullah pa.s.sed the months of autumn and the early winter in the desert, moving about from place to place, as is the custom of the Bedouins, it being his intention to reach a northerly point of Ajman in the spring, in order to fall upon the Persian pilgrims and extort a ransom before they entered the territory of Nejed. For it would not be lawful to attack them after that, since there was a treaty with the Emir of Basrah, allowing the pilgrims a safe and free pa.s.sage towards Mecca, for which the Emir paid yearly a sum of money to the Sultan of Nejed.

But Almasta knew nothing of this, for she was wholly ignorant of the desert; and moreover Abdullah was a cautious man, who held that whatsoever is to be kept secret must not be uttered aloud, though there be no one within three days' journey to hear it.

Abdullah treated her with great consideration, not obliging her to weary herself overmuch with cooking and other work of the tents. For he rejoiced in her beauty and in the sweetness of her voice, and his chief delight was to sit in the door of the tent at night, chewing frankincense, while Almasta sat within, close behind him, and told him tales of her own country, or of the life in the palace of Riad. The latter indeed was as strange to him as the former, and much more interesting.

Now one evening they were alone together in this manner, and it was not yet very cold. But the stars shone brightly as though there would be a frost before morning, and the other tents were all closed and no one was near the coals which remained from the fire after baking the blanket-bread. One might hear the chewing of the camels in the dark and the tramping of a mare that moved slowly about, her hind feet being chained together.

'Tell me more of the palace at Riad,' said Abdullah. 'For your Kura, and your snow-covered Kasbek, and your Tiflis with its warm springs and gardens, I shall never see. But I have seen the courts of the palace from my youth, and the Sultan's kahwah, and the latticed windows of the harem, from which you say that you saw me and loved me in the last days of summer.'

Almasta had said this to please him, though it was not true. For she knew that men easily believe what flatters them, as women believe that what they desire must come to pa.s.s.

'The palace is a wonderful palace,' said Almasta, 'and I will tell you of the treasures which are in it.'

'That is what I wish to hear,' answered Abdullah, putting a piece of frankincense into his mouth and beginning to chew it. 'Tell me of the treasures, for it is said that they are great and of extraordinary value.'

'The value of them cannot be calculated, O Abdullah, for if you had seventy thousand hands and on each hand seventy thousand fingers you could not count upon your fingers in a whole lifetime the gold sherifs and sequins and tomans which are hidden away there in bags. Beneath the court of strangers there is a great chamber built of stone in which the sacks of gold are kept, and they are piled up to the roof of the vault on all sides and in the middle, leaving only narrow pa.s.sages between.'

'If it is all gold, what is the use of the pa.s.sages?' asked Abdullah.

'I do not know, but they are there, and there is another room filled with silver in the same manner. There are also secret places underground in which jewels are kept in chests, rubies and pearls and Indian diamonds and emeralds, in such quant.i.ties that they would suffice to make necklaces of a thousand rows each for each of the mountains in my country. And we have many mountains, great ones, not such as the little hills you have seen, but several days' journey in height. For we say that when the Lord made the earth it was at first unsteady, and He set our mountains upon it, in the middle, to make it firm, and it has never moved since.'

'I do not believe this,' said Abdullah. 'Tell me more about the jewels in Riad.'

'There is no end of them. They are like the grains of sand in the desert, and no one of them is worth less than a thousand gold sherifs. I do not even know the names of the different kinds, but there are turquoises without number, of the Maidan, and all good, so that you may write upon them with a piece of gold as with a pen; and there are red stones as large as a dove's egg, red and fiery as the wine of Kachetia, and others, blue as the sky in winter, and yellow ones, and some with leaves of gold in them, like morsels of treng floating in the juice. But besides the gold and silver and precious stones there are thousands of rich garments which are kept in chests of fragrant wood, in upper chambers, abas woven of gold and silk and linen, and vests embroidered with pearls, and shoes of which even the soles appear to be of gold. And there are great pieces of stuff, Indian silk, and Persian velvet, and even satin from Stamboul, woven by unbelievers with the help of devils.

Then too, in the palace of Riad, there are stored great quant.i.ties of precious weapons, most of them made in Syria, with many swords of Sham, which you say are the best, though I do not understand the matter, each having an inscription in letters of gold upon the blade, and the hilt most cunningly chiselled in the same metal, or carved out of ivory.'

'I saw the treasure of Hal when we took it away after the war, and most of it was distributed among us, but there was nothing like this,' said Abdullah.

'The treasure of Hal is to the treasure of Riad, as a small black fly walking upon the face of the sun,' answered Almasta. 'And yet there was wealth there also, and there was much which you never saw. For that Khaled, who is now Sultan, is crafty and avaricious, and he loaded many camels secretly by night, being helped by black slaves, all of whom he slew afterwards with his own hand lest they should tell the tale, and he then called camel-drivers and sent them away with the beasts to Riad.

And he said to them: "These are certain loads of fine wheat and of mellow dates, for the Sultan's table, such as cannot be found in Riad."

But he sent a letter to his father-in-law, who caused all the packs to be taken immediately to one of the secret chambers, where he and his daughter Zehowah took out the jewels and stored them with their own. And as for me, I believe that Khaled made an end of the Sultan himself by means of poison in Dereyiyah, for he rode away suddenly after they had met, as though his conscience smote him.'

'What is this evil tale which you are telling me?' cried Abdullah.

'Surely, it is a lie, for Khaled is a brave man who gives every one his due and deceives no one. And he is by no means subtle, for I have heard him in council, and he generally said only, "Smite," but sometimes he said "Strike," and that was all his eloquence. But whether he said the one or the other, he was generally the first to follow his own advice which, indeed, by the merciful dispensation of Allah, procured us the victory. But what is this tale which you have invented?'

'And who is this Khaled whom you praise?' asked Almasta. 'And how can you know his craftiness as I know it, who have lived in the palace and braided his wife's hair, and brought him drink when he was thirsty? Is he a man of your tribe whose descent you can count upon your fingers, from him to his grandfather and to Ishmael and Abraham? Or is he a man of a tribe known to you, and whose generations you also know? Has any man called him Khaled ibn Mohammed, or Khaled ibn Abdullah? Or has he ever spoken of his father, who is probably now drinking boiling water, and the black angels are pounding his head with iron maces. Yet he says that he came from the desert. Then you, who are of the desert, do not know the desert, for you do not know whence he is. But there are those who do know, and he fears them, lest they should tell the truth and destroy him.'

'These are idle tales,' said Abdullah. 'Is it probable that the Sultan would have bestowed his daughter and all the treasures you have described upon such a man without having made inquiries concerning his family? And if the Sultan said nothing to us about it, and if Khaled holds his peace, they have doubtless their reasons. For it may be that there is a blood feud between the people of Khaled and some great person in Riad, so that he would be in danger of his life if he revealed his father's name. Allah knows. It is not our business.'

'O Abdullah, you are simple, and you believe all things!' cried Almasta.

'But I heard of him in Basrah.'

'What did you hear in Basrah? And how could you have heard of him there?'

'I was in the Emir's harem, being kept there to rest from the journey after they had brought me from the north. And there I heard of Khaled, for the women talked of him, having been told tales about him by a merchant who was admitted to the palace.'

'Now this is great folly,' answered Abdullah. 'For Khaled came suddenly to Riad, and was married immediately to Zehowah, and on the next day he went out with us against Hal, which we took from the Shammar in three weeks' time from the day of our marching. Moreover we found you there in the palace. How then could news of Khaled have reached Basrah before you left that place?'

'I had come to Hal but the day before you attacked the city,' said Almasta. 'But did I say that I had heard of him as already married to Zehowah?'