Urged thus the Turk offered another five philips, but with obvious reluctance. The Jew, however, entirely unabashed by a tirade against him, the like of which he heard a score of times a day in the course of trading, pulled forth a heavy purse from his girdle.
“Here are one hundred philips,” he announced. “ ’Tis overmuch. But I offer it.”
Ere the dalal’s pious and seductive tongue could urge him further the Turk sat down again with a gesture of finality.
“I give him joy of her,” said he.
“She is thine, then, O Ibrahim, for one hundred philips.”
The Israelite relinquished the purse to the dalal’s white-robed assistants and advanced to receive the girl. The corsairs thrust her forward against him, still vainly battling, and his arms closed about her for a moment.
“Thou has cost me dear, thou daughter of Spain,” said he. “But I am content. Come.” And he made shift to lead her away. Suddenly, however, fierce as a tiger-cat she writhed her arms upwards and clawed at his face. With a scream of pain he relaxed his hold of her and in that moment, quick as lightning she plucked the dagger that hung from his girdle so temptingly within her reach.
“Válgame Dios!” she cried, and ere a hand could be raised to prevent her she had buried the blade in her lovely breast and sank in a laughing, coughing, heap at his feet. A final convulsive heave and she lay there quite still, whilst Ibrahim glared down at her with eyes of dismay, and over all the market there hung a hush of sudden awe. Rosamund had risen in her place, and a faint colour came to warm her pallor, a faint light kindled in her eyes. God had shown her the way through this poor Spanish girl, and assuredly God would give her the means to take it when her own turn came. She felt herself suddenly uplifted and enheartened. Death was a sharp, swift severing, an easy door of escape from the horror that threatened her, and God in His mercy, she knew, would justify self-murder under such circumstances as were her own and that poor dead Andalusian maid’s.
At length Ibrahim roused himself from his momentary stupor. He stepped deliberately across the body, his face inflamed, and stood to beard the impassive dalal.
“She is dead!” he bleated. “I am defrauded. Give me back my gold!”
“Are we to give back the price of every slave that dies?” the dalal questioned him.
“But she was not yet delivered to me,” raved the Jew. “My hands had not touched her. Give me back my gold.”
“Thou liest, son of a dog,” was the answer, dispassionately delivered. “She was thine already. I had so pronounced her. Bear her hence, since she belongs to thee.”
The Jew, his face empurpling, seemed to fight for breath.
“How?” he choked. “Am I to lose a hundred philips?”
“What is written is written,” replied the serene dalal.
Ibrahim was frothing at the lips, his eyes were blood-injected. “But it was never written that. …”
“Peace,” said the dalal. “Had it not been written it could not have come to pass. It is the will of Allah! Who dares rebel against it?”
The crowd began to murmur.
“I want my hundred philips,” the Jew insisted, whereupon the murmur swelled into a sudden roar.
“Thou hearest?” said the dalal. “Allah pardon thee, thou art disturbing the peace of this market. Away, ere ill betide thee.”
“Hence! hence!” roared the crowd, and some advanced threateningly upon the luckless Ibrahim. “Away, thou perverter of Holy Writ! thou filth! thou dog! Away!”
Such was the uproar, such the menace of angry countenances and clenched fists shaken in his very face, that Ibrahim quailed and forgot his loss in fear.
“I go, I go,” he said, and turned hastily to depart.
But the dalal summoned him back. “Take hence thy property,” said he, and pointed to the body. And so Ibrahim was forced to suffer the further mockery of summoning his slaves to bear away the lifeless body for which he had paid in lively potent gold.
Yet by the gates he paused again. “I will appeal me to the Basha,” he threatened. “Asad-ed-Din is just, and he will have my money restored to me.”
“So he will,” said the dalal, “when thou canst restore the dead to life,” and he turned to the portly Ayoub, who was plucking at his sleeve. He bent his head to catch the muttered words of Fenzileh’s wazeer. Then, in obedience to them, he ordered Rosamund to be brought forward.
She offered no least resistance, advancing in a singularly lifeless way, like a sleepwalker or one who had been drugged. In the heat and glare of the open market she stood by the dalal’s side at the head of the well, whilst he dilated upon her physical merits in that lingua franca which he used since it was current coin among all the assorted races represented there—a language which the knowledge of French that her residence in France had taught her she was to her increasing horror and shame able to understand.
The first to make an offer for her was that same portly Moor who had sought to purchase the two Nubians. He rose to scrutinize her closely, and must have been satisfied, for the price he offered was a good one, and he offered it with contemptuous assurance that he would not be outbidden.
“One hundred philips for the milk-faced girl.”
“ ’Tis not enough. Consider me the moon-bright loveliness of her face,” said the dalal as he moved on. “Chigil yields us fair women, but no woman of Chigil was ever half so fair.”
“One hundred and fifty,” said the Levantine Turk with a snap.
“Not yet enough. Behold the stately height which Allah hath vouchsafed her. See the noble carriage of her head, the lustre of her eye! By Allah, she is worthy
