Читать книгу Zarah the Cruel - Joan Conquest - Страница 4

Table of Contents

“From the afternoon it will appear if the night will be clear.”—Arabic Proverb.

Zarah the Cruel leaned on the wall which surrounded the chapel of the monastery, built by early Christians in the fifth century, and looked down at two dogs fighting upon the plateau near the water’s edge.

Twenty years had passed since Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, so called by his men, who adored him, had adopted the natural stronghold in a desert waste as home, naming it the Sanctuary, unwitting that he poached upon the poetical tendencies of the long dead Holy Palladius; fifteen years since he had taken to wife Mercedes, the beautiful Spaniard, the arrogant daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee, who, made prisoner as she journeyed on business bent across the Arabian Peninsula in the company of her high-born and feckless father, had condescended to marry the notorious robber-sheikh in exchange for the liberty of her progenitor and the safe conduct of himself and his retinue out of the country. She had condescended to marry him, but in the secret places of her passionate, adventurous heart she had come most truly to love him, so that the years preceding the birth of their daughter had been years of happiness; years in which, although the raids upon caravans and peoples had been as fierce and bloody as before, the lot of the prisoners had been considerably lightened, until those who had not the wherewithal to pay the ransom demanded had come to sing as they set about their tasks of herding cattle, tending harvests, or working to strengthen and beautify the ruins upon the mountainside. Those who had the means, or friends altruistic enough to raise the ransom, had paid it and taken their departure with a distinct feeling of regret in their hearts.

Many had thrown in their lot with the outlawed chief, whilst the physically undesirable had been liberated at once and sent packing on the homeward track, so that harmony had reigned in the strange place and the welfare of the brotherhood had increased a hundredfold.

Three years later Mercedes died, leaving in her stead a woman-child, upon whom the Sheikh poured out the adoration of his stricken heart. A strange, quiet woman-child, who had neither cried nor laughed as she had lain in her father’s arms, staring past him out of tawny, opalescent eyes.

And as she grew, beautiful, cruel, and as relentless as the desert to which she belonged, so did unrest and fear and passion grow in the erstwhile happy community, until women ran and seized their children so that her shadow should not fall upon them, prisoners shrank at sight or sound of her, and the men, hating her in their hearts yet hypnotized by her beauty and her great daring, whispered amongst themselves as they questioned the one, the other, as to the next whim or new punishment her ungovernable temperament would invent.

For an Arabian she was well educated. Vain as a peacock, she forced herself, loathing it the while, to take advantage of every opportunity of learning which presented itself, solely with the object of shining before the men, who, with, the exception of one nicknamed the Patriarch, were as illiterate as most Arabs are.

A learned Armenian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman, made prisoners through an injudicious display of wealth, had each had the sentence of heavy ransom commuted to that of two years’ instruction to the Sheikh’s almost ungovernable daughter.

The Jew had taught her to read and to write whilst thoroughly appreciating his robber-host’s hearty hospitality; the Spaniard had taught her his language and the dances of his country whilst enjoying the wild life he had led between lessons; the Frenchman had taught her his language and the use of the foils, and had asked for her hand in marriage, to be thoroughly surprised at a blunt refusal.

She read everything she could get hold of, lining the reconstructed walls of two cells, which had once echoed the prayers and witnessed the austerities of the holy monks, with books brought by caravan from the port of Jiddah. She could eat quite nicely with a knife and fork and manipulate a finger napkin with some dexterity, but showed a preference for her fingers—which she wiped upon the carpet or by digging them into the hot sand—and her splendid white teeth for the process of separating meat from bone.

From her father she undoubtedly came by her magnificent horsemanship and surpassing skill in the use of weapons of self-defence.

He delighted in her physical training, spending hours with her either in a room which had been fitted up as a gymnasium after the counselling of the Frenchman; or on the plateau, pitting her skill with spear, rifle and revolver against that of youths of her own age; or away in the desert riding with the magnificent horses for which he had become famous throughout the Peninsula.

Trained to a hair, with a ripple of muscle under the velvety, creamy skin which the sun barely bronzed, she could, at last, throw an unbroken horse with any of her father’s followers, or ride it bare-back out into the mystery of the terrible desert, heedless of its efforts to dismount her, driving it farther and farther with little golden spurs until, with its pride shattered and its heart almost broken, she would race it back, utterly spent, to the shade of the mountains.

She joined the enthusiastic men in the sports they got up amongst themselves to pass the monotony of leisure hours, or hunted with them for the sheer joy of killing, laughing with delight when she brought down ostrich or gazelle, firing at carrion for the sole purpose of keeping her hand in, leaving the birds to die where they fell.

Born and bred in the heat of the tropics, which hastens the physical development of both sexes in the Eastern races, she was almost full grown upon her twelfth birthday. She inherited the beauty of her mother, save for the colour of her hair, which rioted over her head in short curls and flamed like the setting sun, and the colour of her eyes, which shone like a topaz in the moonlight or as the storm-whipped desert, according to the violence or moderation of her mood. Through the Andalusian strain in her mixed blood she had come by her perfect hands and feet and teeth, and to the same source was she a thousand times indebted for the grace of her movements and gait and the assurance of her pose.

Her father’s tenacity was abnormally developed in her. It had helped him to cling to life in the first turbulent years in the desolate Sanctuary; it helped her to beat down his almost indomitable will over matters both great and small, until, save for an occasional outburst of authority, he was as wax in her slender hands. Of his great-heartedness, his charity towards the needy—for whom he so often robbed the wealthy, with much violence and bloodshed—his justice and understanding, she had not one particle in her heart of stone, as she had not a glimmer of the humour and tenderness which had served to balance her mother’s arrogance and passionate nature.

In her, the crossing of the races, exaggerating the defects, minimizing the merits of her parentage, had resulted in a terrible streak of cruelty which roused a fierce hatred in heart of man and beast.

Virile, ambitious, relentless, she was cursed from birth by the strength of her dual nationality.

Driven, beaten, horses did her bidding, but had never been known to answer to her call; dogs hated her instinctively, but feared her not one bit; her arm still showed, would always show, the marks of Rādi’s teeth when, from an incredible distance, the greyhound bitch leapt upon her to revenge the death, by drowning, of one pup which had angered the girl by its continual whimpering. For her life she dared not visit the kennels unattended.

She had tried, but had failed to bring about the fall of Yussuf of the Wondrous Eyes, who loved the Sheikh as a brother, and would have laid down his life for him if he had so desired.

She hated him for his beauty, for his indifference towards her, for the love he inspired in animals—Rādi, the famous greyhound; Lulah, the fastest mare; Fahm, the priceless dromedary, were all his.

Allah! how she hated him!

He responded to her hate with a hate transcending that of his own dog, the maddened bitch; he had hated her blindly from the very beginning—for causing the death of the woman who had brought such happiness to his friend; for usurping her place and his place in the Sheikh’s heart; for her cruelty, her tyranny, her utter disregard of the happiness and welfare of others.

He set himself to thwart the child in every possible way and upon every possible occasion—craftily, so that none should point to him as the author of the contretemps which so strangely and so frequently befell her.

From the day she could understand until the dawn of her tenth birthday misfortune after misfortune fell upon her, until those who met her, covertly made the gesture, used all the world over, to avert the evil eye; whilst the Sheikh tore his beard in secret as he tried to elucidate the mysteries of the dead mare, the broken spears, the disappearance, almost within sight of the Sanctuary, of an entire caravan laden with gifts for her, and other calamities which had befallen his offspring, in whom, blinded as unfortunately are so many doting parents, he saw no fault.

But when the sun rose on the anniversary of Zarah’s tenth year of life, Yussuf’s hate, as is the wont of unbridled passions, turned back upon him, whilst tragedy followed close upon his heel as he wended his way to the Hall of Judgment by one of the many paths he had made, in his love of solitude, amongst the rocks. Mohammed-Abd looked up at the handsome face and smiled into the wondrous eyes which looked down into his in such splendid friendliness and bade him sit beside him on the carpet, upon which were spread gifts of gold and silver, ivory and glass and silk, to celebrate the festival.

“Zarah would ride thy mare Lulah in the gazu this night, little brother. Behold would she be well mounted when gaining the title of Hadeeyah by leading the men to the attack, even as did Ayesha, the wife of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, the one and only God.”

“She would ride Lulah?” replied Yussuf slowly, ignoring the girl entirely, intentionally, so as to rouse her anger. “Lulah, descendant of the mare that brought thee safely across the path so many moons ago?”

As it happened, Zarah did not mind if she rode mare or stallion in her first raid upon a caravan which had been reported as travelling, heavily laden, towards Hutah.

Foiled, up to that very moment, in all her efforts to break or bend the man she hated with all her heart, she was making one last effort to triumph over him.

Incapable of understanding the friendship between the men, under-estimating Yussuf’s strength of character, believing, in her colossal vanity, that he was merely the victim of a petty jealousy roused by her beauty and her power over the Sheikh, she had decided to make her request before her father upon a day when, so she thought, no one would dare refuse her anything.

“Yea! little brother,” replied Mohammed-Abd, “the fastest mare in all Arabia!”

Knowing nothing whatever about fortune telling, and merely to plague the girl, Yussuf, slowly and with an irritating nonchalance, drew certain signs upon the floor, then spoke, as Fate, who held the strings by which they were hobbled to their destinies, dictated.

“I see Lulah flying across the desert sands,” he whispered, “at dawn, with death upon her back. She flees for her life, with hate, revenge, hard upon her heels. She stumbles, there is ... nay! I see no more. ’Tis hidden in the mists of time. But death, death with a crown of red above her snow-white face, rode her, with hate upon her heels.”

He looked across at Zarah, who, ridden with superstition, and totally unaware that he was fooling her, leant far back upon her cushions, one hand extended, with fingers spread against disaster, the other clutching an amulet of good luck hanging about her neck.

He smiled at her terror and shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands, palm uppermost, as though to protest against such signs of weakness. The action, the look in the wonderful eyes, acted as a spur upon the girl, goading her to maddest wrath. With a mighty effort she controlled herself and leaned far forward, eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of hate.

“What has death to do with me?” she cried. “Verily dost thou croak like a bird of prey. I say that I will ride Lulah, the black mare, thy mare, as far as anything in the Sanctuary can be thine, who art but a servant. Hearest thou? I ride Lulah, the black mare!”

“Behold! have I ears to hear thy words, and eyes to see thy face distorted in anger! Yet I say that thou shalt not ride the mare.”

The men who sat in the body of the hall smoking or drinking coffee whilst listening to the dispute, nudged each other at the sudden, tense silence which fell between the two.

“A golden piece, Bowlegs, to the dagger in thy belt that trouble befalls before the coffee grows cold within the cups,” whispered the Patriarch, whose benign exterior covered a heart given entirely to gambling.

Bowlegs, who had gained his unpoetical sobriquet on account of his lower limbs, which had become almost circular through his infantile desire to run before he could crawl, laid his dagger on the carpet beside the golden piece.

“Nay! Not to-day. Fall the trouble will between the two who love each other as love the cat and dog, but not upon the tiger-cub’s day of festival—hist—she speaks.”

“And why shall I not ride the black mare?”

Zarah spoke slowly, clearly, whilst the Sheikh looked from the one to the other in grief and anxiety.

“Because she is in foal!”

It was a lie, the girl knew it was a lie, the Sheikh knew it was a lie, as he leaned forward and tried to catch her hand.

He was too late.

“Liar!” she screamed. “Accursed liar!” she screamed again, as she seized a heavy, cut-glass bowl and hurled it in Yussuf’s face, against which it smashed to pieces, cutting it to ribbons, a thousand needle-pointed splinters of glass putting out for ever the light of the wondrous eyes.

“The box went in search of the lid until it met with it.”—Arabic Proverb.

The mistaken love of friends saved him, though would it have been far kinder to have let him close his blinded eyes in the last long sleep, from which he would perchance have wakened with a clearer vision and a better understanding.

“The will of Allah? Does our brother live or die? Speak quickly lest I pinch thy windpipe ’twixt thumb and finger.”

Some many days later the renowned herbalist procured from Hutah, in the Hareek Oasis, by the simple process of kidnapping, and brought, blindfolded, by swiftest camel to the curing of the sick man, looked up at Al-Asad, the gigantic Nubian.

“He lives,” replied the wizened old man, gently removing the Nubian’s slender fingers from about his scraggy throat. “But would have died long ere my advent if it had not been for the tender ministrations of yon woman Namlah and her son, smitten with dumbness.”

Al-Asad nodded as he looked to where Namlah, the busy, who had tended the sick man day and night, stretched out pieces of soft white muslin to dry, with the help of her son.

“Aye, verily has she a heart made for mothering. Two apples has she, one for each eye. Two sons, though which one she loves the most we do not know. The one who is gifted with speech and is slow of wit, or the dumb one with a mind like yonder sparkling water? Hey! Namlah! thou busy ant, wilt give thy boy to the herbalist so that he acquires much learning in medicine?”

Namlah clutched her dumb boy to her heart.

“I will kill him, or her, who takes one of mine from me!” she shrilled, taking off the amulet of good luck from about her own neck to hang it round her son’s. “The jewels, the fair name, yea! even the eyes canst thou take from a woman, but her manchild, never!”

She spat in the direction of the dwelling where slept the girl upon whom she waited sometimes as body-woman, whereupon the Nubian laughed good-naturedly, bidding her keep a hold upon her tongue.

“Yea! but verily,” said the unsuspecting herbalist, “does the Sheikh’s daughter need a whip across her shoulders.”

“And thou thy tongue pulled forth by the roots!”

Al-Asad, who loved the Sheikh’s daughter with all the strength of his fierce nature, made an ineffectual grab at the terrified old man as he shot like a rabbit down the rocky path; then laughed and looked up to where the girl slept, and fell a-dreaming of the day when, now that Yussuf was out of the running, he might perchance, by right of force, step into the Sheikh’s shoes upon his death, to rule the leaderless men and to wed the fatherless daughter.

The wounds healed, the fever abated, yet for many days, feigning weakness, tended by the dumb youth whom he christened “His Eyes,” Yussuf lay planning revenge for his loss of sight.

Distraught with pain, unable to control his thoughts in the agony of his wounds, he finally decided to leave it to time, which did not mean that he murmured Kismet in the quiet watches of the everlasting night which had fallen upon him.

The Oriental submits uncomplainingly to sickness, misfortune and death, but he sees to it that his revenge is of his own fashioning and one that will, if possible, descend unto the furthest generation.

He left his sick bed a seemingly humble, repentant, and forgiving soul, blaming himself for the disaster and promising to make amends for past misdemeanour—seemingly; for not for one single moment of the dreary days and pain-filled, sleepless nights did the thought of revenge leave his tortured mind. Bereft of the joys of hunting and the daily thrills which make part of a marauder’s life, he wandered by day, ever guarded by “His Eyes,” around and about the buildings of the monastery and over the rocks amongst which they had been built; at night he lay, until the coming of the dawn he could not see, thinking, planning, discarding, to think and plan again.

The second sight of the blind, through touch and auditory nerve, came to him swiftly, until, at length, sure-footed as a goat, he passed where no other would have dared to place a foot; of a truth, there did not seem to be rock, or precipice, or height round, through, or over, which he could not lead one safely; nor human whom he could not designate by the sound of his, or her, footfall on sand or rock.

It approached the uncanny even in the blind, bringing with it a certain respect from others, who, thinking him possessed of a djinn or evil spirit of the desert, left him alone, with the exception of Mohammed-Abd and the half-caste Nubian, who loved him only one whit less than they loved the girl who had blinded him.

Refusing all aid, even that of “His Eyes,” he passed days in discovering and establishing the exact position of the narrow path which stretched through the quicksands up to the foot of the mountain. Day after day, night after night, in the cool of sunrise or sunset, in the peace of star or moonlight, or in the noonday heat, he followed the edge of the quicksands upon his knees, feeling and digging, until one noon his slender fingers found that for which they searched. He turned his face to the sun, and, sure-footed as a goat, picked his way, step by step, backwards, feeling, feeling with his toes, across the quaking bog to the spear stuck fast between two rocks.

There he passed the blazing hours, registering the location of the path by the lay of the sun upon the rocks and his mutilated face; and never once, afterwards, did he fail by day to find his way, unaided, either going out or coming in, across the narrow way.

He crossed to the desert at night upon the back of either one or the other of the two animals he loved to ride, and which, with the help of “His Eyes” and much patience, he trained to negotiate the path without fear and without help of guiding hand or knee.

During the training, Lulah, spoilt and sensitive, had wellnigh lost her life more times than could be numbered; whereas Fahm, the black dromedary, ambled indifferently across the dangerous path as though its great, cushioned feet trod the desert sands.

A magnificent beast, this black hejeen of Oman.

Brainless as a sheep, swift as the wind, as enduring as it was obstinate, it was worth the price of many blood-red rubies on account of its colour, and had fallen to Yussuf as his share of the spoil resultant upon a sanguinary and none too successful attack upon a caravan of camels belonging to the great Sheikh Hahmed, the Camel King.

And with it all he waited, patiently and with the Oriental’s fatalism, throughout the years, for his revenge upon Zarah the Arabian.

Subtle, crafty, determined that by his hand alone should punishment fall upon her, he had argued with and beseeched the Sheikh and his fellow-men to spare her. Even upon the night of the disaster had he whispered, between the cut lips held together by the hour in Namlah’s tender fingers—had whispered in urgent entreaty, until the men, crowding about his couch, thinking him crazed with fever, touched their foreheads as they looked at each other and made oath upon the beard of the Prophet to do so.

They had thought him crazed with fever then, thereafter they ever thought him slightly mad.

They would touch their foreheads when he spoke gently of the girl, and would shake their heads when he questioned them closely about the suitors who, afire with the tales of her beauty and her wealth, came themselves or sent emissaries laden with gifts, piled high on camel back, to ask her hand in marriage.

They thought him slightly mad, whereas, if they could but have seen into his sane and cunning mind, they would have understood that his interest in the girl’s marriage had root in a great fear that he would so be cheated of his revenge.

But Zarah, exceeding proud of the European blood in her veins, had no wish to wed at an age when European girls were still at school, neither had she the slightest intention of becoming one of the four wives which Mohammed the Prophet in his wisdom, knowing the weakness of character and want of self-control in man, allotted unto the male sex. So that Yussuf sighed in relief as each suitor, blindfolded, was led back across the path by which, blindfolded, he had come, and, laden with gifts, set upon the homeward track.

Actively, he knew he could do nothing in revenge until Fate whispered in his ear, but in a hundred ways, a hundred times a day, he made the girl’s life a burden to her.

He refused to cover his face, which was no fit sight for man or woman, and took to haunting her, craftily withal, so that it seemed that by mere chance his shadow fell so often upon the path she trod.

She had no escape from him.

If she passed in a crowd he picked out her footfall; when the place was full of the sound of the neighing of horses and the barking of dogs, he could hear her coming, and, quick and silent as a beast of prey, sliding, slipping, holding by his hands, would reach the spot where, knowing the turns and twists of every path, he knew that she must pass; he would stand or sit without movement, staring at her out of sightless orbits, whilst she, believing him ignorant of her presence, would pass swiftly, silently, with averted head and fingers spread against misfortune.

He stood close behind her in the shadows, wrapped in the Bedouin cloak, as she leaned on the wall watching the fight between the dogs, one of which had been accepted as a gift by the rejected suitor who, at that moment, made his adieux to the Sheikh in the Hall of Judgment.

In the depths of the girl’s startling eyes shone a merciless light; an amused smile curved the beautiful, scarlet mouth; she clapped her hands covered in jewels, and, jogged by Fate, laughed aloud at the despair of the groom who had allowed the dogs to escape from the kennels.

Jaw locked in jaw, bleeding, exhausted, the dogs were fighting to the death, but they sprang apart when the sound of the girl’s laughter was brought to them on the evening breeze and crouched, glaring upwards, ruffs on end, growling, the anger of the moment forgotten in their hatred of the woman.

Furious at the dogs’ display of hatred in front of the attendant, consumed with a desire to punish them, Zarah turned to run up the steps leading to the Hall of Judgment where were stacked the weapons of defence.

“Thy spear!” she shouted to a youth who came towards her from the men’s quarters.

She seized it from him and leapt upon the wall, standing straight and beautiful, her white draperies blown against her by the evening breeze. She paid no attention to the shouting of the groom; instead, she took careful aim and laughed as the spear, flashing like silver in the sun rays, sped downwards and buried itself in the flank of the greyhound which had been accepted as a gift by her father’s guest.

Her vanity appeased, she turned away, neither did she look back as she mounted the steps to her own dwelling.

Had she but glanced over her shoulder she might have taken a warning from the terrible look of satisfaction on blind Yussuf’s face.

“‘The little bird preens the breast, while the sportsman sets his net.’” He laughed to himself as he muttered the proverb, and passed on into the shadows and out of sight.