“Thou at least wouldst be content, thou fount of malice,” growled Asad.
“Call me harsh names, O sun that warms me! Am I not thine to use and abuse at thy sweet pleasure? Pour salt upon the heart thou woundest; since it is thy hand I’ll never murmur a complaint. But heed me—heed my words; or since words are of no account with thee, then heed his deeds which I am drawing to thy tardy notice. Heed them, I say, as my love bids me even though thou shouldst give me to be whipped or slain for my temerity.”
“Woman, thy tongue is like the clapper of a bell with the devil swinging from the rope. What else dost thou impute?”
“Naught else, since thou dost but mock me, withdrawing thy love from thy fond slave.”
“The praise to Allah, then,” said he. “Come, it is the hour of prayer!”
But he praised Allah too soon. Womanlike, though she protested she had done, she had scarce begun as yet.
“There is thy son, O father of Marzak.”
“There is, O mother of Marzak.”
“And a man’s son should be the partner of his soul. Yet is Marzak passed over for this foreign upstart; yet does this Nasrani of yesterday hold the place in thy heart and at thy side that should be Marzak’s.”
“Could Marzak fill that place?” he asked. “Could that beardless boy lead men as Sakr-el-Bahr leads them, or wield the scimitar against the foes of Islam and increase as Sakr-el-Bahr increases the glory of the Prophet’s Holy Law upon the earth?”
“If Sakr-el-Bahr does this, he does it by thy favour, O my lord. And so might Marzak, young though he be. Sakr-el-Bahr is but what thou hast made him—no more, no less.”
“There art thou wrong, indeed, O mother of error. Sakr-el-Bahr is what Allah hath made him. He is what Allah wills. He shall become what Allah wills. Hast yet to learn that Allah has bound the fate of each man about his neck?”
And then a golden glory suffused the deep sapphire of the sky heralding the setting of the sun and made an end of that altercation, conducted by her with a daring as singular as the patience that had endured it. He quickened his steps in the direction of the courtyard. That golden glow paled as swiftly as it had spread, and night fell as suddenly as if a curtain had been dropped.
In the purple gloom that followed the white cloisters of the courtyard glowed with a faintly luminous pearliness. Dark forms of slaves stirred as Asad entered from the garden followed by Fenzileh, her head now veiled in a thin blue silken gauze. She flashed across the quadrangle and vanished through one of the archways, even as the distant voice of a muezzin broke plaintively upon the brooding stillness reciting the Shehad—
“La illaha, illa Allah! Wa Muhammad er Rasool Allah!”
A slave spread a carpet, a second held a great silver bowl, into which a third poured water. The Basha, having washed, turned his face towards Mecca, and testified to the unity of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, King of the Day of Judgment, whilst the cry of the muezzin went echoing over the city from minaret to minaret.
As he rose from his devotions, there came a quick sound of steps without, and a sharp summons. Turkish janissaries of the Basha’s guard, invisible almost in their flowing black garments, moved to answer that summons and challenge those who came.
From the dark vaulted entrance of the courtyard leapt a gleam of lanterns containing tiny clay lamps in which burned a wick that was nourished by mutton fat. Asad, waiting to learn who came, halted at the foot of the white glistening steps, whilst from doors and lattices of the palace flooded light to suffuse the courtyard and set the marbles shimmering.
A dozen Nubian javelin-men advanced, then ranged themselves aside whilst into the light stepped the imposing, gorgeously robed figure of Asad’s wazeer, Tsamanni. After him came another figure in mail that clanked faintly and glimmered as he moved.
“Peace and the Prophet’s blessings upon thee, O mighty Asad!” was the wazeer’s greeting.
“And peace upon thee, Tsamanni,” was the answer. “Art the bearer of news?”
“Of great and glorious tidings, O exalted one! Sakr-el-Bahr is returned.”
“The praise to Him!” exclaimed the Basha, with uplifted hands; and there was no mistaking the thrill of his voice.
There fell a soft step behind him and a shadow from the doorway. He turned. A graceful stripling in turban and caftan of cloth of gold salaamed to him from the topmost step. And as he came upright and the light of the lanterns fell full upon his face the astonishingly white fairness of it was revealed—a woman’s face it might have been, so softly rounded was it in its beardlessness.
Asad smiled wrily in his white beard, guessing that the boy had been sent by his ever-watchful mother to learn who came and what the tidings that they bore.
“Thou hast heard, Marzak?” he said. “Sakr-el-Bahr is returned.”
“Victoriously, I hope,” the lad lied glibly.
“Victorious beyond aught that was ever known,” replied Tsamanni. “He sailed at sunset into the harbour, his company aboard two mighty Frankish ships, which are but the lesser part of the great spoil he brings.”
“Allah is great,” was the Basha’s glad welcome of this answer to those insidious promptings of his Sicilian wife. “Why does he
