Hence her desperate, reckless courage to stand thus before him now, for although her face was veiled there was hardy arrogance in every line of her figure. Of his scowl she took no slightest heed.
“If this be the slave fetched by Sakr-el-Bahr from England, then rumour has lied to me,” she said. “I vow it was scarce worth so long a voyage and the endangering so many valuable Muslim lives to fetch this yellow-faced, long-shanked daughter of perdition into Barbary.”
Asad’s surprise beat down his anger. He was not subtle.
“Yellow-faced? Long-shanked?” quoth he. Then reading Fenzileh at last, he displayed a slow, crooked smile. “Already have I observed thee to grow hard of hearing, and now thy sight is failing too, it seems. Assuredly thou art growing old.” And he looked her over with such an eye of displeasure that she recoiled.
He stepped close up to her. “Too long already hast thou queened it in my harem with thine infidel, Frankish ways,” he muttered, so that none but those immediately about overheard his angry words. “Thou art become a very scandal in the eyes of the Faithful,” he added very grimly. “It were well, perhaps, that we amended that.”
Abruptly then he turned away, and by a gesture he ordered Ali to return the slave to her place among the others. Leaning on the arm of Tsamanni he took some steps towards the entrance, then halted, and turned again to Fenzileh:
“To thy litter,” he bade her peremptorily, rebuking her thus before all, “and get thee to the house as becomes a seemly Muslim woman. Nor ever again let thyself be seen roving the public places afoot.”
She obeyed him instantly, without a murmur; and he himself lingered at the gates with Tsamanni until her litter had passed out, escorted by Ayoub and Marzak walking each on one side of it and neither daring to meet the angry eye of the Basha.
Asad looked sourly after that litter, a sneer on his heavy lips.
“As her beauty wanes so her presumption waxes,” he growled. “She is growing old, Tsamanni—old and lean and shrewish, and no fit mate for a Member of the Prophet’s House. It were perhaps a pleasing thing in the sight of Allah that we replaced her.” And then, referring obviously to that other one, his eye turning towards the penthouse the curtains of which were drawn again, he changed his tone.
“Didst thou mark, O Tsamanni, with what a grace she moved?—lithely and nobly as a young gazelle. Verily, so much beauty was never created by the All-Wise to be cast into the Pit.”
“May it not have been sent to comfort some true believer?” wondered the subtle wazeer. “To Allah all things are possible.”
“Why else, indeed?” said Asad. “It was written; and even as none may obtain what is not written, so none may avoid what is. I am resolved. Stay thou here, Tsamanni. Remain for the outcry and purchase her. She shall be taught the True Faith. She shall be saved from the furnace.” The command had come, the thing that Tsamanni had so ardently desired.
He licked his lips. “And the price, my lord?” he asked, in a small voice.
“Price?” quoth Asad. “Have I not bid thee purchase her? Bring her to me, though her price be a thousand philips.”
“A thousand philips!” echoed Tsamanni amazed. “Allah is great!”
But already Asad had left his side and passed out under the arched gateay, where the crowd was grovelling anew at the sight of him.
It was a fine thing for Asad to bid him remain for the sale. But the dalal would part with no slave until the money was forthcoming, and Tsamanni had no considerable sum upon his person. Therefore in the wake of his master he set out forthwith to the Kasbah. It wanted still an hour before the sale would be held and he had time and to spare in which to go and return.
It happened, however, that Tsamanni was malicious, and that the hatred of Fenzileh which so long he had consumed in silence and dissembled under fawning smiles and profound salaams included also her servants. There was none in all the world of whom he entertained a greater contempt than her sleek and greasy eunuch Ayoub-el-Samin of the majestic, rolling gait and fat, supercilious lips.
It was written, too, that in the courtyard of the Kasbah he should stumble upon Ayoub, who indeed had by his mistress’s commands been set to watch for the wazeer. The fat fellow rolled forward, his hands supporting his paunch, his little eyes agleam.
“Allah increase thy health, Tsamanni,” was his courteous greeting. “Thou bearest news?”
“News? What news?” quoth Tsamanni. “In truth none that will gladden thy mistress.”
“Merciful Allah! What now? Doth it concern that Frankish slave-girl?”
Tsamanni smiled, a thing that angered Ayoub, who felt that the ground he trod was becoming insecure; it followed that if his mistress fell from influence he fell with her, and became as the dust upon Tsamanni’s slippers.
“By the
