The Witch of Aleppo/Chapter 10
X
THE ZINEH OF ALEPPO
WHEN the middle of the morning came, and a captain of janizaries flung open the door of the prison, Michael walked forth steadily. He kept his head back, and by an effort of will stiffened his knees against trembling. Hunger, that had been an agony, left him and he did not feel weak; but, coming out into the glare of sunlight on the uppermost terrace, just under the castle wall, he was conscious of sweat starting out all over his limbs.
In the center of the terrace the blunt end of a ten-foot stake had been sunk into the earth at an angle, leaving the sharpened end projecting along the surface of the grass. Near at hand, slaves held the bridles of two Arab ponies, while others attached ropes to the breast-strap.
About this cleared space the guests of the night before sat on carpets in the shade of olive and lemon-trees; officers of the guard strolled around, swaggering, some with hawks on their wrists, for the latticed windows of the palace hid the women of Sidi Ahmad—soft-limbed girls of many races whose lustrous eyes would brighten at the spectacle of the torture.
Here and there negroes placed trays of sherbet and sweetmeats before the watchers, and Michael heard voices crying wagers—how long would he endure before crying out. Beyond the low line of foliage, he beheld again the white minarets, the gold and purple domes of the Moslem city, and, like an echo upon the breeze came the faint cry of the caller-to-prayer:
“Allah is the only god; and Mohammed is his prophet … prayer is good … the hour of prayer is at hand …”
A drone, as of multitudinous bees, arose from the streets below, where hundreds of worshippers were facing toward Mecca.
The spectators on the terrace arose and salaamed. The bird-like man—who acted the part of Sidi Ahmad—had appeared in the shadows under the trees, and with him Demid. The Cossack left his host and strolled over to inspect the stake and the horses. Michael’s gaze flew to him and lingered, while, absently, he noticed that Demid wore two swords, his own and the simitar of honor bestowed by the master of the feast the evening before.
This struck Michael as strangely ridiculous.
“Two swords—and one man—one sword too many, i’faith!”
He wagged his head, and a chuckle arose in his throat. The guards looked at him askance, and a mameluke, in a fur-tipped khalat strolled over to stare his fill at the victim of the maut ahmar.
“A comely dog,” the dark-faced warrior from Egypt muttered, caressing a gold chain at his throat, “but too lean in the limb—his bones will crack like a chicken’s. I have seen”
He confided, low-voiced, to one of the Turks what he had seen in the way of torture visited upon other Nazarenes. Michael’s voice croaked.
“Yah khawand, a word with yonder noble, El Kadhr. I who go to the Severer of Life ask it.”
“Will you confess the hiding-place of the pig kazaks?"
Michael shook his head, not caring to trust his voice again. He wished to warn Demid that Balaban was in Aleppo and that Balaban was Sidi Ahmad; but when be took an uncertain step forward toward his friend, nausea seized on him.
“Wine!” he whispered. “A cup of wine before the ordeal.”
“To hear is to obey!”
The janizary whispered something to one of the palace slaves, who presently fetched a silver goblet from the courtyard. Michael seized it and raised it to his lips with a hand kept steady by the utmost effort of his will.
Within the cup was vinegar.
Michael quivered and hurled the silver goblet at the Moslem who had tricked him, and the mameluke smiled, beholding his musk-scented companion soaked with the vinegar.
“Eh, there is a devil in this prince of unbelievers! Nay—” as the other, red with rage, strove to draw sword—“this Frank is to be spared for the fate that awaits his kind.”
Perceiving the attention of the throng on him for a second, the warrior of the khalat made a mock salaam before Michael.
“I pray your honor’s honor to ascend the throne prepared for you. Ho, Moslems, give heed to this dog-coronation!”
A ripple of mirth passed over the savage faces, and merciless eyes fastened on the prisoner. Pleased with his own wit, the mameluke leaned forward to pull the stubble of beard that had grown on Michael’s chin.
“Will you go forward to the stake, or shall I bid the palace wenches hither to whip you on?”
For a second the thought of angering the soldier—provoking him to use his sword—came to Michael. But then he was aware that by going to the stake he might speak to Demid, who had recognized him before now.
Michael crossed himself, and, followed closely by a janizary and the mameluke, walked up to the stake. Now he saw that Demid’s face was tense, and that the Cossack’s eyes were smoldering even while he stood with folded arms.
A high-pitched voice, rife with amusement, floated from one of the palace windows.
“Where are the kazaks, O Nazarene?” Sidi Ahmad asked.
Michael halted and from very weariness leaned on the stake, while the slaves pulled forward the ropes attached to the horses.
“Here is a Cossack!”
It was thus that Demid spoke for all to hear, and answered the question of Sidi Ahmad. And before his lips closed on the words, his two swords were out of their sheaths. Michael never knew how the blades were drawn so swiftly, because he did not see Demid’s left hand drop to the hilt of the simitar on his right side, and the other hand to the sword of honor, on his left hip.
Nor did Michael see which blade it was that struck off the head of the mameluke, sending it rolling over the grass. But he did notice that one of the simitars struck down the weapon the janizary drew, and then passed across the-silk vest of the Moslem warrior. The curved blades seemed only to stroke the man, but its razor edge severed the abdominal muscles and left the janizary dying on his feet, still staring in blank amazement.
Demid whirled on the slaves and struck one down; the remaining Moslem took to his heels, but tripped and fell, such was his dread of the steel that had taken the lives from three in thrice as many seconds.
“Two swords—one man,” Michael muttered, still in a half stupor.
For a brief moment the Cossack and the cavalier stood alone by the stake, but already men were recovering from their amazement and rising to their feet under the trees. Sidi Ahmad, the clever, had indulged his whim to test Demid a trifle too far, and the Cossack knew how to use the minute of time that was worth more than the treasure of Sidi Ahmad to him.
“Can you stick to a horse’s back?” he cried at Michael who was stumbling toward him. “Grapple the mane, but stick!”
With that he gave his comrade a hoist up, to the nearest pony. The other horse had shied at the smell of blood, but Demid ran to him, caught the dangling bridle, and glanced over his shoulder.
“On your faces, dogs,” he roared at the oncoming guards. “A Cossack ataman rides through you. On your faces!”
He pointed to the prostrate forms around the stake and a shout of anger answered him. Perhaps the rage inspired by his challenge hampered the effort of the Moslems on the terrace to get near, perhaps no one cared to be the first to step into the path of Demid’s horse. They had grouped toward the road leading to the gate, and hither Demid started, taking the rein of his pony in his teeth.
But almost at once he swerved from his course, caught the rein of Michael’s horse in one hand that held a sword and beat both beasts with the flat of the other blade. They struck into a short-paced trot, and passed between the in-running guards. Demid’s sword flashed on either side, steel striking against steel, and one man fell.
The ponies lengthened their stride, guided by the superb horsemanship of the Cossack, and broke through the foliage of the terrace edge, taking the jump to the garden below, almost unseating Michael as they did so. Demid steadied his friend and headed toward the roadway, which was here unguarded. They reached it before their pursuers could come down from the upper level, and Michael saw that the gate in the main wall was open before them.
A shout from above brought out the warriors who had been squatting in the shade of the wall, but at that distance no command was heard clearly and no man thought to try to stop the notable El Kadhr, who galloped through the gate and down into the market-place.
OLD is Aleppo, mother of cities and father of thieves. Time has brought to its streets in turn the changing peoples of the earth, the Indian, the Parsi, the triumphant Israelite—saints and pharisees, princes and lepers—and the conquering Moslem. Each built upon the ruins of the other, and made of the city a labyrinth where alleys ran underground and bathing wells were the cisterns of former palaces. And where the caravans came, thither came the thieves.
Hither had come the old Arab who had stolen Michael of Rohan, and the boy Hassan, the Arab’s son.
At mid-morning they were sleeping in their cubicle in the serai of the desert men, sleeping with one eye open, because the boy had cut a purse not long before from a soldier who might bring an accusation against them—and they had no desire to face a Turkish khadi, a judge who might have a memory for past crimes, and who would certainly have an itching palm. Also, they wished to lie low before venturing out that evening to join the procession of the Guilds, when quarrels and purses might be picked.
So the curtain was drawn across their compartment, but the weasel ears of the boy Hassan heard the trumpets blare from the direction of the palace.
“Allah,” he muttered, yawning and spitting, “has caused something to happen. The trumpets have called for the city gates to be closed.”
Horses’ hoofs thudded in the alley underneath and entered the arcade of the caravanserai’s shops, and passed on after a fragmentary pause. Both Hassan and his father, however, heard boots on the stone steps that led up to the gallery of the inn, and presently their curtain was snatched aside and two men entered, the leader being the Nazarene slave whom they had sold to the Turks. Michael had guided Demid to the only place of refuge known to him.
Demid strode across the chamber and jerked the old thief to his feet by the beard. The Arab’s whiskers bristled, like an angry cat’s, and he grasped at his weapons, when he recognized his assailant and hesitated.
“O Aga, what is this? It is not fitting to put the hand of violence upon the beard of age—Ai, spare the boy, O captain of men!” Hassan had started to knife Michael in the ribs and Demid bruised the lad’s wrist with a backward slap of his simitar. “Verily, the youth is of tender years, and without guile. What wrong have we done?”
“Enough,” whispered Demid curtly, and proceeded to disarm the desert man by undoing his girdle and letting the various knives and hand-guns fall to the floor. “Off with your garments.”
“What madness is this?” The Arab looked anxiously at Michael, who had caught Hassan by the throat. The plight of the boy affected him more than the danger to himself, and, after a shrewd glance into the set face of the Cossack, he peeled off the hooded cloak, shirt and loose trousers.
Demid bade Hassan strip to his shirt, and kicked the weapons of the Arabs into a corner. Standing between his prisoners and the entrance, he cast off his own valuable garments and the Arab’s eyes glistened on beholding the jewel-sewn folds of the turban and the cloth-of-gold girdle.
When the Arab was naked, Hassan almost so, and the two fugitives clad in their clothing, Demid adjusted a veil about the lower portion of Michael’s face, and turned to study the old man who without weapons and cloak looked very much like a shorn lion.
“Hearken, O father of trickery,” he said quietly. “It is for you to cover the road of our flight with the dust of discretion. You have no love for Sidi Ahmad, and I am his foe.”
“Then you are a fool, because within these walls you can not escape him,” retorted the thief frankly, adding that the gates were closed.
“No more can he escape me," assented Demid, and even Hassan choked with astonishment. “You are the gainer by my garments, but wear them not abroad or show them, lest you be put into a shroud.”
“Mashallah!”
“And these garments of the Frank, conceal them likewise. You will have your weapons back again. But as surety for your silence I will take with me this boy, your son, who must guide us to a place of good hiding.”
At this the Arab wailed and fell on his knees, beating his head against the stone, and crying that Hassan was a piece of his liver, the very core of his heart.
“He will not suffer,” said Demid grimly, “if we are not found by those who seek us out. If you betray us I will cut his body open and lay him out by the butchers’ quarter where the dogs will”
“Ai-a! Allah prosper thee, harm him not, and the master of the Wolf’s Ear can not make me speak. By my beard, upon the Koran I swear it!”
“Good. I am not a breaker of promises: see to it that you are likewise.”
While he spoke, Demid thrust the sword given him by the Turks under his cloak, signed for Michael to do likewise with the other weapon, and pushed his beard behind a fold of the voluminous garment. Picking up a cord, he bound one end about the wrist of Hassan and the other to Michael’s sash.
“Stoop when you walk, my friend,” he said, “and speak thickly if one addresses you. Look upon the ground, and wonder not. The reason for this will be known to you when we reach the only place that is safe in Aleppo.”
It was not hard for Michael to counterfeit weariness, and they passed unnoticed out of the gallery, through the courtyard, into the crowded alley. Demid caught snatches of talk that told him how their horses had been found not far from here, but as they had dismounted at the end of the arcade where deep shadow had hidden them, no one was sure where the prisoners had gone. Even as they turned away, a detachment of janizaries pushed through the throngs and entered the serai. A miskal of gold had been promised the one who found El Kadhr and the escaped Frank.
Demid however, loitered along and stopped to buy some dates and rice for Michael. When Hassan came up, leading the supposedly sick man, Demid whispered to the boy to show the way to the Gate of Victory. And Hassan gave proof that the byways of Aleppo were well known to him.
From one arcade to another, down into a dark wine cellar, thence through a passage to a coffee house—where Demid took time to sit and drink a bowl—up into the quarter of the saddlers and shield-makers where hides, hung up to dry filled the air with a stench greater than that of the hovels they had left—from there to the covered court of a bathhouse he led them.
Men stopped him, to ask questions, but the boy’s wit found a ready answer and Demid took the center of the alleys, reeling along like a desert man who had sat up with the wine bowl the night before.
“To the well of the lepers,” he muttered, drawing up to Hassan.
The boy shivered, but just then a group of the palace guards came up to search the bath and he turned aside among the heaps of cinders from the bathhouse fires, to a nest of clay hovels grouped around a square hole in the ground. Steps led down this excavation, and Michael flattened against the wall when a mournful figure climbed up past him—a man with loose, white-blotched flesh and swollen lips, who grunted from a tongueless mouth.
At the bottom of the steps where shadow gave a little relief from the sun squatted other foul shapes, watching with lackluster eyes several of their companion lepers bathing in the sunken well. Hassan sought out a corner as far as possible from the sick men, and Michael watched Demid stagger up and lie down beside him.
A drunken Arab and another leper with a boy for guide aroused no interest in the unfortunate people of the well, and no questions were put to the three.
Demid waited until Michael had eaten a little, and then rolled over to whisper: “Sleep will help you, for you are weary. Yet hearken first to what is to be done. The fight at the stake can not change my plans because Lali acts with us, and we may not get word to her before night.”
“Lali—do you trust her?”
“Why not? She could have betrayed me, yet she has been faithful.”
“Aye, she had me taken from Sivas and sold! She was jealous, because you cherished me.”
Demid swore under his breath.
“What a girl! There is a demon in her, and she boasted of her prank to me, then wept because she was not forgiven. We were close upon the heels of your caravan when the Arabs raided it; then I made Lali play the spy upon them, and bring us the tidings that you were being taken to Aleppo. The rahb—the fast camels went too swiftly for our pursuit. Yet that is past and now we have work to do.”
He cuffed Hassan, who had crept closer to listen, upon the ear and promised him a bath in the lepers’ pool if he tried to overhear what was said.
“I owe you my life,” said Michael, starting to hold out his hand but remembering that he was a leper for the time being.
Demid wrinkled his nose and spat.
“Hide of the , what a smell is here. I would rather bed down with the goats of than in here. Nay, you saved my skin on the galley when I was burdened with the girl. You owe me naught.”
“Balaban!” Michael started, at mention of the galley. “He is here and he is the pasha, Sidi Ahmad. The other is a mask in his place.”
“I saw that.”
Demid was silent for several moments, his lips set in hard lines as he listened to the tale of what had befallen his friend. “So we had the leader of these Moslems on the galley, and knew it not. The thought came to me at the Cossack camp that Balaban was a spy. So I took him with us, to point out the way across the sea, and he escaped our hand.”
The young Cossack frowned, gnawing at his beard, his arms crossed on his knees.
“Ai this is an evil place. Here there was once the church of a Christian saint, and now over its ruins stands a nest of thieves. How is that to be endured?”
His dark eyes fell moody, and Michael knew that one of the fits of brooding had gripped him. Yet the Cossack was not thinking of the opportunity he had lost. He was musing upon the work to be done, and this he explained to Michael, slowly, making sure that the cavalier understood the part he was to play. Demid never hurried himself or his men. When the time for quick action came he took the offensive at once, Cossack fashion; but, always, he had thought out beforehand what was to be done.
So it seemed to his enemies that he acted on impulse, and they spoke of him as a falcon that strikes on swift wings from an open sky; but even that morning at the stake he had seen in his mind’s eye how Michael might be saved. In this he was different from Michael, who—utterly daring as Demid—acted altogether on impulse.
“This night,” said the Cossack, “we will lift the treasure of Sidi Ahmad.”
“’Swounds! That disguise of yours will never pass you into the Wolf’s Ear!”
Demid nodded.
“True, my friend, and that is why Sidi Ahmad will not look to find me within the Wolf’s Ear. So, the fight at the stake has aided us, when all is counted—aye, because it has given a messenger to send to Ayub and my children.”
“What messenger?”
“You, a leprous man.”
Michael shivered, for the well of the lepers did not strike him as much better abiding place than the torture stake.
“Where have you quartered Ayub and his blades—in the lazar house?”
“Nay, with the dead, in the burial place of the Moslems without the city wall. Even Sidi Ahmad did not think to search the grove of trees among the tombs on yonder hill by the Bab el Nasr. The Moslem warriors do not visit the graves, and the women who go there fear the spirits of the place. Ibnol Hammamgi told me of it—he has taken to cover there, in other days.”
“Good!” Michael grinned a little, thinking of Ayub. “But that is without the gate, and the gate is closed.”
“Hassan will open it.”
“With what?”
“With you, O my companion of the road. You will be a leper, about to yield life; he will be your son, taking you to the ditch in the burial place wherein those who are unclean are laid while they still breathe. To rid themselves of you, the guards at the gate will open it a little, unseen, because it will be dark by then.”
“And after that”
Demid took up the dates left by Michael, who had eaten what he dared, and fell to munching them.
“First there is a tale to tell.”
AND it was a tale that banished all desire for sleep from the weary Michael.
A generation after Christ, the body of St. George was laid in a tomb in one of the cities of the Israelites. When the wave of Moslems over-swept the land, the Turks heard of the legend of al-khidr, the Emir George, and sought for the tomb but did not find it. The Armenians, however, who took refuge from the invasion in the northern mountains knew the situation of the tomb of the warrior saint, and during the crusades pilgrims from their folk visited it—until the order of the Sultan of the Turks forbade Christians to enter Aleppo. So much Demid had heard from the batko—the priest of the Cossacks.
The tomb was at the base of the tower which now formed the Wolf’s Ear, a dozen feet or more underground.
At the time of the Moslem conquest, the last Christians to leave the tower had screened the entrance to the stair leading down to the tomb as well as they could. But since the pasha’s palace had been built around the tower, Ibnol Hammamgi had heard that the stair had been uncovered.
The cral had ventured once with the Armenian patriarch in disguise to penetrate to the site. The patriarch knew of another entrance, also covered up by rocks that led in from the hillside behind the palace at the base of the cliff. They had been able to remove the protecting boulders unseen by the guards of the palace above, and had made their way up a short passage to the vault, only to find that the inner door could not be opened from the outside.
It was on leaving the passage, after replacing the rocks, that Ibnol Hammamgi had been seized and tortured by janizaries. During his captivity Ibnol Hammamgi had used his good eye and his ear to advantage and suspected that the tower was now a treasure vault of Sidi Ahmad.
“FAITH!” cried Michael of Rohan, “the one-eyed mountain goat has the right of it! The torture chamber where I lay may be the chapel of St. George, and the tomb must be below it. Aye, I mind that Sidi Ahmad passed at times up and down a stair into which a door opened from the place of torture.”
He described how he had encountered the master of the Wolf’s Ear the evening before and Demid listened attentively.
“The stair leads higher, into the tower,” Michael added thoughtfully. “The Moslems built it upward, I’ll wager odds on’t, when they turned the chapel into a dungeon. Well for you they did. Small good it would do you, Demid, to enter the vault and pass through the door into the dungeon. They would crown you in my place on the stake.”
“Aye,” responded die Cossack slowly as was his wont. “From the sepulcher the stair will take me high in the tower—the treasure of Sidi Ahmad is bulky, ivory, silks from India, gold plate from Persia—and knows what else. He would keep it in a place apart.”
“Saw you such a place in the Wolf’s Ear?”
Demid shook his head.
“Faith! Ibnol Hammamgi found the tomb door closed against him. How then will you enter?”
“Lali will come to the other side. She has pledged it.”
It had been agreed between them that the Armenian girl was to make her way down the stair at the beginning of the second watch of that night, and open the portal to Demid.
“The fox, Sidi Ahmad can not trust his officers with his secret—there is no faith between them—so the place of the treasure must be hidden. Lali will find out what may be discovered. At that hour the procession of the Guilds—the weapon-makers, the gold spinners, the saddlers, will pass through the terraces before the palace as is customary on this day of the year. Many within the palace will have their eyes on the festival—on the lamps, and their ears will heed the kettledrums and pipes.”
“Even so, what if Lali whispers one word to Sidi Ahmad”
“She could not go back to her people. The girl has a spirit of flame, there is nothing she will not dare. Besides, she has a longing to go back to her tribe. We will see.”
And Demid, in a whisper, told Michael what he must do to aid him. At first the cavalier said stubbornly that he would not leave him, but the Cossack pointed out that Michael’s presence would be of small use if he failed in the Wolf’s Ear, whereas if he won clear he would need Michael and the men, to escape from the city. Besides, if no messenger were sent to the warriors, they and Ayub would remain on the hill outside the wall until they were discovered and slain.
“They had an order,” he added gravely.
“Egad,” thought Michael, “and so have I.”
“Keep Hassan by you until the last; so long as you have him the Arab will not lift his voice against us.”