When Diego de Guzman plunged through the window, he had no idea of what lay in the darkness beneath him. He did not fall far, and he crashed among shrubs that broke his fall. Springing up, he saw his pursuers crowding through the window he had just shattered, hindering one another by their numbers. He was in a garden, a great shadowy place of trees and ghostly blossoms. The next instant he was racing among the shadows, weaving in and out among the shrubbery. His hunters blundered among the trees, running aimlessly and at a loss. Unopposed he reached the wall, sprang high, caught the coping with one hand, and heaved himself up and over.
He halted and sought to orient himself. He had never been in the streets of El Kahira before, but he had heard the inner city described so often that a mental map of it was in his mind. He knew that he was in the Quarter of the Emirs, and ahead of him, over the flat roofs, loomed a great structure which could be only the Lesser West Palace, a gigantic pleasure house, giving onto the far-famed Garden of Kafur. Fairly sure of his ground, he hurried along the narrow street into which he had fallen, and soon emerged on to the broad thoroughfare which traversed El Kahira from the Gate of el Futuh in the north to the Gate of Zuweyla in the south.
Late as it was there was much stirring abroad. Armed Memluks rode past him; in the broad Beyn el Kasreyn, the great square which lay between the twin palaces, he heard the jingle of reins on restive horses, and saw a squadron of Sudani troopers sitting their steeds under the torchlight. There was reason for their alertness. Far away he heard tom-toms drumming sullenly among the quarters. Somewhere beyond the walls a dull light began to glow against the stars. The wind brought snatches of wild song and distant yells.
With his soldier’s swagger, and saber hilt thrust prominently forward, de Guzman passed unnoticed among the mailed and weapon-girded figures that stalked the streets. When he ventured to pluck a bearded Memluk’s sleeve and inquire the way to the house of Zulaikha, the Turk gave the information readily and without surprize. De Guzman knew – as all Cairo knew – that however much the Arab had regarded Al Hakim as her special property, she had by no means considered herself the exclusive possession of the caliph. There were mercenary captains who were as familiar with her chambers as was Al Hakim.
Zulaikha’s house stood just off the broad street, built closely adjoining a court of the East Palace, to the gardens of which indeed it was connected, so that Zulaikha, in the days of her favoritism, could pass between her house and the palace without violating the caliph’s order concerning the seclusion of women. Zulaikha was no servitor; she was the daughter of a free shaykh, and she had been Al Hakim’s mistress, not his slave.
De Guzman did not anticipate any great difficulty in obtaining entrance into her house; she pulled hidden strings of intrigue and politics, and men of all creeds and conditions were admitted into her audience chamber, where dancing girls and opium offered entertainment. That night there were no dancing girls or guests, but a villainous looking Yemenite without question opened the arched door above which burned a cresset, and showed the false Moor across a small court, up an outer stair, down a corridor and into a broad chamber into which opened a number of fretted arches hung with crimson velvet tapestries.
The room was empty, under the soft glow of the bronze lamps, but somewhere in the house sounded the sharp cry of a woman in pain, accompanied by rich musical laughter, also in a woman’s voice, and indescribably vindictive and malicious.
But de Guzman gave it little heed, for it was at that moment that all hell burst loose outside the walls of El Kahira.
It was a muffled roaring of incredible volume, like the bellowing of a pent-up torrent at last bursting its dam; but it was the wild beast howling of many men. The Yemenite heard too, and went livid under his swarthy skin. Then he cried out and ran into the corridor, as there sounded the swift padding of feet, and a laboring breath.
In a nearby chamber, straightening from a task she found indescribably amusing, Zulaikha heard a strangled scream outside the door, the swish and chop of a savage blow, and the thud of a falling body. The door burst open and Othman rushed in, a wild and terrifying figure, white eyeballs and bared teeth gleaming in the lamplight, blood dripping from his broad scimitar.
“Dog!” she exclaimed, drawing herself up like a serpent from its coil. “What do you here?”
“The woman you took from me!” he mouthed, ape-like in his passion. “The red-haired woman! Hell is loose in Cairo! The quarters have risen! The streets will swim in blood before dawn! Kill! kill! kill! I ride to cut down the Sunnite dogs like bamboo stalks. One more killing in all this slaughter means nothing! Give me the woman before I kill you!”
Drunk with blood-hunger and frustrated lust, the maddened black had forgotten his fear of Zulaikha. The Arab cast a glance at the naked, quivering figure that lay stretched out and bound hand and foot to a divan. She had not yet worked her full will on her rival. What she had already done had been but an amusing prelude to torture, mutilation and death – agonizing only in its humiliation. All hell could not take her victim from her.
“Ali! Abdullah! Ahmed!” she shrieked, drawing a jeweled dagger.
With a bull-like roar, the huge black lunged. The Arab had never fought men, and her supple quickness, without experience or knowledge of combat, was futile. The broad blade plunged through her body, standing out a foot between her shoulders. With a choked cry of agony and awful surprize she crumpled, and the Sudani brutally wrenched his scimitar free as she fell. At that instant Diego de Guzman appeared at the door.
The Spaniard knew nothing of the circumstances; he only saw a huge black man tearing his sword out of the body of a white woman; and he acted according to his instincts.
Othman, wheeling like a great cat, threw up his dripping scimitar, only to have it beaten stunningly down on his woolly skull beneath de Guzman’s terrific stroke. He staggered, and the next instant the saber, wielded with all the power of the Spaniard’s knotty muscles, clove his left arm from the shoulder, sheared down through his ribs, and wedged deep in his pelvis.
De Guzman, grunting and swearing as he twisted his blade out of the prisoning tissue and bone, sweating in fear of an attack before he could free the weapon, heard the rising thunder of the mob, and the hair lifted on his head. He knew that roar – the hunting yell of men, the thunder that has shaken the thrones of the world all down through the ages. He heard the clatter of hoofs on the streets outside, fierce voices shouting commands.
He turned toward the outer corridor when he heard a voice begging for something, and wheeling back into the chamber, saw, for the first time, the naked figure writhing on the divan. Her limbs and body showed neither gash nor bruise, but her cheeks were wet with tears, the red locks that streamed in wild profusion over her white shoulders were damp with perspiration, and her flesh quivered as if from torture.
“Free me!” she begged. “Zulaikha is dead – free me, in God’s name!”
With a muttered oath of impatience he slashed her cords and turned away again, almost instantly forgetting about her. He did not see her rise and glide through a curtained doorway.
Outside a voice shouted: “Othman! Name of Shaitan, where are you? It is time to mount and ride! I saw you run in here! Devil take you, you black dog, where
A mailed and helmeted figure dashed into the chamber, then halted short.
“What – ?
“Not I!” responded de Guzman cheerfully. “I left the city as I swore to do; but I came back.”
“Where is Othman?” demanded Al Afdhal. “I followed him in here – Allah!” He plucked his moustaches wildly. “By God, the One True God! Oh, cursed Caphar! Why
De Guzman grinned wolfishly. “You are not rid of me so easily this time,
The Turk started. “What?”
“Why continue this masquerade?” retorted de Guzman. “I knew you when we went into the house of Zahir el Ghazi, which was once the house of Es Salih Muhammad. Only a master of the house could be so familiar with its secrets. You helped me kill el Ghazi because the Berber had hired Zaman and the others to kill you. Good enough. But that is not all. I came to Egypt to kill el Ghazi; that is done; but now Al Hakim plots the ruin of Spain. He must die; and you must aid me in his overthrow.”
“You are mad as Al Hakim!” exclaimed the Turk.
“What if I went to the Berbers and told them that you aided me to slay their emir?” asked de Guzman.
“They would cut you to pieces!”
