The Witch of Aleppo/Chapter 12
XII
A woman’s wit is sharp as the dagger of a Rifi thief; a woman’s soul is like a covered mirror wherein no man can behold truth with his eyes until the veil is drawn.
JAL-UD-DEEN, the treasurer of Sidi Ahmad, was taking a reading of the stars in the cupola of the tower when the third hour of the night drew toward its close. His vulture-like skull gleamed under a red lamp as it bent over a Persian zodiac, and a table of the movements of the planets.
Glancing up from time to time, he peered from an open square in the dome at the pin points of fire in the heavens that were stars. Old was Jal-ud-deen, old and shrewd and cautious. Skilled in astrology, he was about to take the reading of Sidi Ahmad’s birth star.
“Fortune has served me,” murmured the pasha. “Aye, time brings its fulfillment and the day when my standard will be raised in Islam.”
Lying full length on a sofa, only his eyes moved as he watched the labor of the man who had taken his name and place until this time should come, so that Sidi Ahmad should be alive to reap the fruits of his efforts.
“O lord of the planets—mirror of the glory of Allah,” murmured the savant, “that which is written will come to pass.”
“And what is written?”
“The message of the stars is not dear. A portent lies under my hand, and within the hour”
“Nay, I will name the portent for you.” Sidi Ahmad smiled, well content. “It is good. The Shah of Persia, with whom thou hast been negotiating, hath poured water on his sword. He will aid me. So will the mamelukes of Egypt and the beys of Tripoli.”
The wazir, marking down his observations on a sheet of parchment, inclined his head.
“Within the vault below the tower, O favored of Allah, thou hast a hundred thousand swords.”
Sidi Ahmad started, and then smiled approval.
“Aye, wealth to buy them. And the confidence of the Sultan Mustapha to use them. At the imperial city they say that he who controls the janizaries of the court rules Islam. For a time I feared the king of kings, who made gifts of a dagger’s point to other pashas of Aleppo, but to me he sent a damsel who is like the moon.”
The astrologer frowned.
“Why did the dog of a kazak burden himself with the maiden?”
“She was the surety of his mission—it would have put the shadow of doubt on his tale had he appeared in Aleppo without the woman.”
Sidi Ahmad fingered the scar on his cheek thoughtfully.
“Before the night is past my men will have thrust a spear into every corner of Aleppo, and the dog will be brought to me. He has not escaped the walls.”
“But the other?”
“Is a fool. Behold, I have here the safe conduct given him by the Sultan. Allah deliver us from such safe conducts, for it calls for a life! I shall earn another coin of good-will from my master by sending the Frank’s head with this paper to Mustapha.”
The wazir smiled.
“Then should we have the head washed in rose water, and the beard combed and scented. What has my lord done with the maiden?”
“I have sent for her. The slaves are long in finding the wench. I have a mind to look upon her unveiled.”
“Beware of trickery, my lord. The singing girl prays not with the faithful, and I do not think she is a Moslem at heart.”
“What matter, O reader of the stars? Hath a singing girl a heart?” Sidi Ahmad yawned and sat up abruptly.
“O lord of lords, king of kings, commander of the faithful!” Lali’s voice from the open door of the tower room startled the two men because she saluted Sidi Ahmad as a Sultan. He sprang up, brows furrowed, and snatched the veil from under her eyes.
“Allah! What man told you”
“Pardon your servant, O Pasha.” Lali bent her dark head, the trace of a smile trembling on her lips. “Am I blind not to know who gives orders in Aleppo? Are you not Sidi Ahmad, the Lion of Islam, the far-seeing, the great in heart?”
The narrow eyes of the tall Moslem sparkled as he realized the beauty of the girl. She met his gaze without flinching, her cheeks pale against the dark flood of hair.
“Verily Riwan hath opened the gates of paradise,” murmured the pasha, “and let out this damsel for my delight.”
But even as he spoke with a satisfied smile, his hand went out and he unclasped the ear-rings that fell to her shoulders. A black pearl was set in each, and Sidi Ahmad felt keener pleasure in the touch of them than in the soft skin of the girl.
“Worth twenty sequins, the pair,” he muttered, and stripped a gold bracelet from her arm. “And this almost as much. Why did you linger, at my summons?”
“Lord,” spoke up one of the armed slaves who conducted her, “we found this woman fumbling at the door that leads to the tomb below the tower—a thing forbidden by your command.”
Sidi Ahmad ceased smiling, and his lips set cruelly.
“Ah, so you have light fingers.”
Lali tossed her head, watching the pasha from under lowered lids.
“Favored of Allah, there was talk that you had in the tower a store of Persian silks and rolls of cloth-of-gold, sewn with pearls”
“What talk is this?” The man’s cunning was written in every line of his thin face.
“Nay, what have you seen? You had no key”
He read confusion in the girl’s flushed cheeks and lowered eyes, and nodded thoughtfully. His vanity prompted him to show to Lali greater riches than she had seen at the court, and suspicion impelled him to examine the door at the stairhead. Lali seemed to hang back, and he fancied that she was troubled.
“Come,” he said.
“O my lord!” Jal-ud-deen started up from his calculations. “The portent of the stars is dark indeed. I fear”
“Bah!”
Sidi Ahmad had eyes only for the singing girl as he strode through the door. The guard was changing, and he took eight swordsmen with him into his chambers on the floor below, leaving the same number posted without—for the guard was doubled that night.
The astrologer, having made his salaam, drew back to study his chart again. From the opening in the dome he stared down upon the lighted terraces where cordons of janizaries stood between the throngs of revelers and the palace. Tall minarets rose against the stars like so many spears upraised. A gong sounded the hour from the courtyard below and the heavy tread of soldiery answered it.
Jal-ud-deen reflected that it was well the pasha’s anger had fallen upon the girl rather than on himself.
WITH a key taken from his girdle Sidi Ahmad unlocked the door in his sleeping chamber and signed for the men to conduct Lali after him. One with a cresset torch went ahead, down a narrow stair that wound upon itself steeply, being built in a corner of the tower. At the landing opposite the dungeon Sidi Ahmad halted his followers and bade them await his coming or his call.
Lighting an oil lamp that stood in a recess of the wall, he signed for Lali to descend with him. At the foot of the last flight of steps he drew back a heavy curtain, and entered a vaulted chamber where the air was chill and heavy.
Here he set down the lamp upon what had been once an altar of black marble. Drawing Lali with him, he stepped to a row of teak caskets placed upon bales of silk. One of the boxes he opened, disclosing to the gaze of the Armenian, a mass of loose pearls.
With the careful fingers of a miser he opened other caskets, showing rubies and sapphires and turquoise—gold ornaments, and rare, carved ivory. At the far end of the wall were heavy bags and Sidi Ahmad explained that they contained coins. He tossed Lali’s trinkets into one of the boxes and turned upon her suddenly.
“So you were minded to escape from the tower and go hence to join the kazak! Nay, I read in your eyes upon the galley that you loved him, and my memory is long. Is it not true?”
“Verily,” said the singing girl, lifting her head, “it is true.”
And there was pride in her voice. Sidi Ahmad shrugged, studying her as he might muse over a wayward hunting leopard.
“Eh, then I must buy you. What is your price?”
Lali looked at him and instead of answering, pointed to a black cross set in the white marble of the flooring—
“What gold can buy that?”
“By the wrath of Allah!” The Moslem frowned. “Here are strange words for a singing girl. Some bones of the accursed Emir George lie hereabouts and his crypt hath served me well”
“Have you no fear of the wrath you have stored up against you, by entering here?”
The eyes of the girl traveled ceaselessly over the walls of the tomb, searching for the outline of a door. But nothing was to be seen. Solid rows of bricks of dried mud stood on every hand, gray and crumbling with age. Cracks and gaps between the bricks showed only the dark clay behind. Lali had made the round of the chamber, and she dared not tap the wall to seek for the door, if one existed.
With the guards within call on the stair she would not cry out, in the hope that Demid would hear, if he should be near at hand. If, indeed, the Cossack should appear in the tomb now he would walk into a mare’s nest.
Lali’s whole thought was to get Sidi Ahmad away before his suspicions were aroused, and yet he continued to watch her as if taking delight in her distress. If, she reasoned swiftly, there had been a door leading from the tomb into a passage, he would have observed it before now.
Her pulse quickened, at a dull sound close by—a grating, rumbling noise, as if a heavy stone were being rolled about.
Sidi Ahmad heard it, too, and his black eyes darted into the shadows of the tomb. Nothing there. But suspicion like a flame rising in dry tinder seized upon him. His powerful hand caught her slender arm, and his lips drew back from his teeth.
“Ohai, I can read your soul, singing girl. Allah fashioned you to be a dove, but you would fly like a falcon. You came to Aleppo, and you have spied into what is hidden. You know my name, and the place of my treasure, and now your eyes search for a way hence. Did Mustapha set you to slay me?”
His free hand sought fruitlessly for a weapon on the girl, who stood passive in his grasp. His face pressed close to hers.
“Were you sent by the Sultan, to do away with Sidi Ahmad? The truth, or you will not sing again! Ah!”
Lali’s dark eyes blazed into his.
“I came of my own will, and my thought was to cast you down—who slew my father and hunted my people like beasts.”
The words came softly, for his ear alone, yet without pretense of deception. Lali had given utterance to what was in her heart, knowing that her next act would make her defenseless before the rage of the pasha. Her voice, full and clear as a clarion, echoed in the tomb.
“Away Demid! Nine are here with weapons. Away, while there is time!”
The scar on Sidi Ahmad’s cheek grew livid and his hand groped for his sword hilt. And then he crouched as if struck. Something thudded against the wall across the chamber. Dust and fragments of brick flew out. The bricks of the wall moved and fell inward under a series of shocks. A black opening appeared where they had been.
Another blow and a large boulder rolled out over the marble floor. The tall figure of an Arab emerged from the hole.
Although he had looked to see something of the kind, Sidi Ahmad felt a twinge of superstitious fear—fear that the dust and bones of the inmate of the tomb had taken human form. But this passed as he made out the dark countenance of the Cossack, blinking in the glare of the lamp.
Demid strode forward out of the cloud of dust from the shattered bricks that had walled up the passage, and stumbled against the massive rock that—fetched from the hillside—he had used to break down the barrier.
“Go back!” cried Lali, beside herself with anxiety. “Swordsmen wait on the”
Her lips closed on the last word and a moan rose in her throat. Sidi Ahmad had drawn his dagger and thrust it into her side. The steel blade, slender as the tip of a palm frond, passed through the girl’s silk vest without a sound, and the Moslem made no effort to draw it out.
Lali’s hands flew to the ivory hilt of the dagger, and her eyes opened very wide, fastening on the livid face of the man as if bewildered. His voice shrilled in a shout:
“Ho, Moslems! To me”
His simitar flashed out in time to parry the first cut of the Cossack who had crossed the tomb in a stride and a leap. The lamp flickered in a draught from the stair and gleamed red on the whirling steel. The swords hung for an instant as if suspended in the air.
Then the Moslem tore loose his blade and hacked at the Cossack, snarling as he felt his weapon turned aside. The scar on his face made it seem as if he were laughing. Demid was smiling, yet his face was dark and the veins on his forehead stood out.
“O pasha—O captain-pasha,” he said softly, “you, who would take the life from a girl, remember the sword trick that I taught you! So, it went, and so—then your sword in the air again, and then—this!”
Demid’s blade whirled around the Moslem’s simitar and passed through his body. Sidi Ahmad coughed and fell heavily, first his knees striking the marble floor, then his head. His followers rushed into the tomb in time to see him stretched out motionless, upon the great cross.
The eight men stared from the body of their master to the strange Arab standing before them sword in hand. Swords slithered from scabbards, but before they could recover from their astonishment the voice of Lali halted them!
“The order is fulfilled, O men of the tower. Lo, I was sent hither by command of Mustapha, the Sultan, upon whom—be peace. And the order was that Sidi Ahmad, who would have betrayed his master, should die.”
Kneeling, one hand to her side, she fought for breath.
“Look, in the pasha’s girdle—a letter there, asking that his head be sent to the court. Harm not the aga, who was sent with me—El Khadr”
She was silent and the janizaries glanced at one another questioningly. Their eyes fell on the treasure chests, and they fingered their weapons, knowing not what to believe. Lali’s wit served her even when her strength was failing, and for the last time she acted a part, hoping to gain respite for Demid.
One of the janizaries called out that they should go for Jal-ud-deen, another that search should be made for the letter, an other besought Demid—fruitlessly—to cast down his sword.
Instead the Cossack threw back the hood of his garment, and they saw the black scalp-lock that fell to his shoulder. The pent up anger of many days of brooding blazed in his eyes, and those who beheld him thought that he was stricken with madness. The iron restraint of the long journey to Aleppo fell from him when he saw Sidi Ahmad strike Lali, and the blood was leaping in his veins as he watched his foes.
“Come, dogs,” he laughed, “slaves of a slave, come and take me or you will taste the stake and fire. Do you hear? I am the Cossack who rode over you this morning.”
Remembrance of how he had dealt with their comrades made the guards hesitate, but they were no cowards. Spreading out, they advanced on him, and he struck the first one down. Then, turning in his tracks, he sprang at those nearest the wall, warding their cuts and slashing back, hewing to the shoulder-bone the slowest of them.
One of the Moslems stumbled over Lali, as they raised a shout of rage, and the point of the Cossack’s sword raked him under the eyes before Demid stepped back to the wall in the nearest corner.
The gleam of steel was before his eyes, and in a second he was cut across the arm and chest. Two men were pressing him close when the others heard the thud of footsteps drawing nearer, and the war-cry of the Cossacks.
“U-ha!” It was Ayub’s bull voice. “Cut, slash, Demid! Where are you?”
The giant ataman thrust his head through the hole in the wall and displaced a goodly quantity of bricks in getting his body through. Whipping out his broadsword, he made at the five surviving Moslems, and Michael hurried after him. Other heads appeared, and swords gleamed as the Don men came after their leaders.
FAR below the halls of the Wolf’s Ear, the Cossacks worked busily to remove the pick of the treasure of Sidi Ahmad, taking first the jewels, which were thrust into saddle-bags; then the gold ornaments. Ayub, having stationed two warriors on the stair, and satisfied himself that Demid was not seriously hurt, fell to rooting out the best of the carved ivory and the silver fittings. This he did deftly enough, shaking his head with admiration at the hoard Sidi Ahmad had gathered together.
“We must not fail to take off the value of ten thousand sequins,” Demid observed.
He was leaning on his sword while Michael bound up the deep cuts about his shoulders.
“Aye, the ransom of Rurik,” nodded Ayub, intent on his task. “May I never taste mead again, if we fail. Sidi Ahmad had a tight fist, though little good it did him in the end.”
The noise of the fight had been muffled by the depth of the secret stair and the music in the courtyard. Over their heads the Moslems sat at ease, and the astrologer still studied his chart.
But presently a young warrior ran into the vault.
“Father, the brothers at the horses have sent word that people have seen them, and many are crying out”
“To horse!” barked Demid. “Here with that torch!”
Taking the burning brand, he hurled it among the wooden boxes, and tore down the curtains, tossing them near the flames. Glancing around at the bodies of the slain, he stooped and picked up Lali.
“If you must bear hence the witch,” grumbled Ayub, “give her to me. Your wounds will bleed overmuch.”
The eyes of the girl opened, and the mask of pain lifted from her drawn face when Demid’s arms raised her. Her lips moved.
“To Ibnol Hammamgi—ride to my people!” she whispered. “Ai-a, we have kept faith, you and I. We have ridden far with—a free rein, and have I not—kept faith?”
“Aye,” said Demid, pausing and bending his head to catch the almost soundless words.
“Then set me down. I—am not a witch and I do not fear”
Her hands reached up to touch his face, but closed convulsively on his cloak as a spasm of pain seized her. Demid moved into the passage, ahead of Ayub.
“Nay, little falcon,” he said, almost tenderly, “the end of the road is not yet, and surely you will go with me.”
THEY were in their saddles, and put the ponies to a gallop before the pasha’s guards could close in on them. Through the deserted alleys of the Jews’ quarter they passed like the first gust of a storm. From balconies and housetops turbaned heads peered at them, but saw no more than gigantic black forms bending over steeds that spurned up a cloud of dust and were gone.
“They ride like the djinn folk!” voices cried from housetop to balcony.
The colored lamps of a pleasure garden touched bearded faces and naked steel, shining through the dust. Here a patrol of mounted mamelukes drew up, in startled haste, in their path. The pistols of the Cossacks flashed and bellowed, and several of the Moslems dropped while their horses reared and plunged, throwing the rest into disorder.
Headed by Ayub who wielded his two-handed sword like the father of all the djinn, the Cossacks bunched, and, standing in their stirrups to strike the better, broke through the mamelukes and strung out toward the Bab el Nasr, while behind them the Moslems rallied, and the pursuit gathered headway. The shrill roll of kettledrums sounded near at hand and behind them from the dark tower of the dead Sidi Ahmad blared the trumpets giving the signal to guard the city gates.
A shot barked somewhere near the wall and Ayub began to ply his whip.
“That is the essaul. The dogs are biting him and his men. U-ha! Brothers, warriors, is your Cossack strength spent—are your horses hobbled? Faster, then!”
Emerging into the cleared space by the gate Michael saw Broad Breeches standing pistol in hand by the iron portal, while one of his men lay stretched on the earth. The other was engaging a trio of Moslems, who drew back as Demid and his men galloped up.
The essaul plucked the key from his belt and twisted it in the lock. Then he tugged open the barred gate, thrusting it back, to allow the riders to pass through without slackening pace.
“After us!” Demid called over his shoulder.
The warrior who had been fending off the swords of the Moslems whirled his horse and spurred through the gate. The old sergeant whistled up his pony, but, beholding the mass of pursuers drawing near from the mouths of the alleys, he changed his purpose.
“Once my mother bore me,” he muttered, and lifted his hoarse voice in a shout as he perceived that Demid and Michael had reined in to wait for him to come up. “Speed on, ataman. Tell the bandura players my name”
With that he closed the gate hastily, turned the key in the lock, and tossed it far into the darkness on the outer side of the gate. Spitting on his hands, he drew his sword and placed his back against the in side of the iron barrier. He was the oldest of the Cossacks, the essaul, and many Winters had whitened his hair; his eyes were growing dim and his aged heart glowed with satisfaction because the minstrels would now hear of his name and perhaps put it into their songs. Besides, Michael had given him an order to keep the gate closed.
So he drew his sword and his gray mustache bristled fiercely as the Moslems spurred their horses in on him.
The locked gate and the lost key delayed their pursuit for a precious half-hour while they rode to another opening in the wall and circled back to take up the trail of the Cossacks.
MICHAEL had spent his strength. He stumbled down from his saddle when Demid called a halt at midnight, and another warrior changed the saddle for him to a fresh horse. Vaguely he was aware that Demid still carried the body of the young girl and that the flood of her black hair fell down over the ataman’s knee like a silken cloak. She had died before the ride began.
He was too tired to feel the ache in his limbs, or the salty dryness of his throat. With his hands gripping the pommel, he let the pony have its head, and, looking back after a while, he puzzled over a red glow that rose above the black line of the wall of Aleppo. The palace of Sidi Ahmad was burning to the ground, but Michael was past caring.
Dry dust of sand was in the air, stinging his eyes; the wind brushed the damp hair from his forehead; the glimmer of the stars through the haze over the desert grew to a flare of torches, and Michael pulled himself awake by a sheer effort of will, to see that the Cossacks had halted and were lighting flares to search for tracks in the sand to show the path they should follow.
“Why do you talk,” he muttered drowsily, “when there is a debt to be paid?”
A shaggy head loomed over him and a voice rumbled in his ear.
“The little Frank is past his strength. I will see to it, but he has a true thought. We can not bear the money to our brothers if we talk about the road, with Satan’s hunting pack at our heels.”
Demid took the lead and they went on at hazard. Once more the saddles creaked, and the cold wind stirred about them. Michael swayed and went into a deep sleep but Ayub’s arm steadied him until the streak of dawn on their right hand showed them the first ridge and the valley through which the northern trail ran, full ahead.
Here they breathed the horses and let them roll, until dust began to show on the desert floor behind them and they mounted the freshest beasts, going through the pass and striking out for the river Jihan, two miles in advance of the nearest Moslems.
It was not yet dusk when they reached the river and forced the sweating horses across. Their animals were done by now, but the leading pursuers were on camels that balked at crossing the river, and by the time that the horsemen came up, Demid was able to turn aside from the trail and hide his tracks in a rocky ravine. Safe for a few hours, they walked their horses, sleeping in the saddles.
Before dawn they dismounted to eat a little and drink from the water-bags they had filled at the river. With the first light Demid sent men to the nearest heights to try to place the detachments of janizaries that must be well up with them by now.
After ascertaining their position and that of the nearest pursuers they set out, keeping to the clay gullies, for they were in broken country here, close to the foothills.
Michael found that one of his saddle-bags was filled with heavy bits of gold. He took some up in his hand, wondering whether the treasure would serve them in the end. But Demid would not hear of abandoning it.
Late that afternoon they entered the first fringe of timber, on the higher slopes of the mountains, and over their heads loomed the white peaks of the Caucasus. It was here that a youth in sheep-skins came leaping down toward them, crying eagerly that Ibnol Hammamgi was awaiting them in the nearest pass with fresh horses, and that fighting was in progress between the Turks and the Sivas tribe that had waited here to cover their retreat if they came back.
Michael, in fact, soon heard the flicker of arrows in the brush and the neighing of horses. Not until then had he known how close the pursuit had drawn about them. But Demid greeted the chief of the mountain folk without comment and bade him draw his men back with them, for the Turks were in force at their rear.
“I have brought back Lali, daughter of Macari,” he added, “do you bear her to the patriarch, that he may perform the rites due to the child of a chieftain.”