Ortho spent that winter in Morocco City, but in the spring was sent out with a force against the Zoua Arabs south of the Figvig Oasis, which had been taken by Muley Ismail and was precariously held by his descendants. They spent a lot of time and trouble dragging cannon up, to find them utterly useless when they got there. The enemy did not rely on strong places—they had none—but on mobility. They played a game of sting and run very exasperating to their opponents. It was like fighting a cloud of deadly mosquitoes. The wastage among the Crown forces was alarming; two generals were recalled and strangled, and when Ortho again saw the Koutoubia minaret rising like a spear-shaft from the green palms of Morocco it was after an absence of ten months. Ourida met him in transports of joy, a two-month baby in her arms. It was a son, the exact spit and image of him, she declared, a person of already incredible sagacity and ferocious strength. A few years and he too would be riding at the head of massed squadrons, bearing the green banner of the Prophet.
Ortho, burned black with Saharan suns, weak with privation, sick of the reek of festering battlefields, contemplated the tiny pink creature he had brought into the world and swore in his heart that this boy of his should follow peaceful ways.
Fighting men were, as a class, the salt of the earth, simple-hearted, courageous, dog-loyal, dupes of the cunning and the cowardly. But apart from the companionship he had no illusions concerning the profession of arms as practiced in the Shereefian empire; it was one big bully maintaining himself in the name of God against a horde of lesser bullies (also invoking the Deity) by methods that would be deemed undignified in a pot-house brawl. He was in it for the good reason that he could not get out; but no son of his should be caught in the trap if he could help it. However, he said nothing of this to Ourida. He kissed her over and over and said the boy was magnificent and would doubtless make a fine soldier—but there was time to think about that.
He saw winter and summer through in Morocco, with the exception of a short trip on the Sultan’s bodyguard to Mogador, which port Mahomet had established to offset fractious Agadir and taken under his special favor.
The sand-blown white town was built on the plans of an Avignon engineer named Cornut, with fortifications after the style of Vauban. This gave it a pronounced European flavor which was emphasized by the number of foreign traders in its streets, drawn thither by the absence of custom. Also there was the Atlantic pounding on the Island, a tang of brine in the air and a sea wind blowing. Ortho had not seen the Atlantic since he left Sallee; homesickness gnawed at him.
He climbed the Skala tower, and, sitting on a cannon cast for the third Philippe in 1595, watched the sun westering in gold and crimson and dreamed of the Owls’ House, the old Owls’ House lapped in its secret valley, where a man could live his life out in fullness and peace—and his sons after him.
Walking back through the town, he met with a Bristol trader and turned into a wine shop. The Englishman treated him to a bottle of Jerez and the news of the world. Black bad it was. The tight little island had her back to the wall, fighting for bare life against three powerful nations at once. The American colonists were in full rebellion to boot, India was a cock-pit, Ireland sharpening pikes. General Burgoyne had surrendered at Saratoga. Eliott was besieged in Gibraltar. French, American and Spanish warships were thick as herring in the Channel; the Bristolian had only slipped through them by sheer luck and would only get back by a miracle.
Taxation at home was crippling, and every mother’s son who had one leg to go upon and one arm to haul with was being pressed for service; they were even emptying the jails into the navy. He congratulated Ortho on being out of the country and harm’s way. Ortho had had a wild idea of getting a letter written and taken home to Eli by this man, but as he listened he reflected that it was no time now. Also, if he wanted to be bought out he would have to give minute instructions as to where the smuggling money was hidden. Letters were not inviolate; the bearer, and not Eli, might find that hidden money. And then there was Ourida and Sa?d II. Sa?d would become acclimatized, but England and Ourida were incompatible. He could not picture the ardent Bedouin girl—her bangles, silks and exotic finery—in the gray north; she would shrivel up like a frost-bitten lotus, pine and die.
No, he was firmly anchored now. One couldn’t have everything; he had much. He drank up his wine, wished the Bristolian luck with his venture and rode back to the Diabat Palace.
A week later he was home again in Morocco.
Added means had enabled him to furnish the Bab Ahmar house very comfortably, Moorish fashion, with embroidered haitis on the walls, inlaid tables and plenty of well-cushioned lounges. The walls were thick; the rooms, though small, were high and airy; the oppressive heat of a Haouz summer did not unduly penetrate. Ourida bloomed, Sa?d the younger progressed from strength to strength, waxing daily in fat and audacity. He was the idol of the odd-job boy and the two slave women (the household had increased with its master’s rank), of Osman Baki and Ortho’s men. The latter brought him presents from time to time: fruit stolen from the Aguedal, camels, lions and horses (chiefly horses) crudely carved and highly colored, and, when he was a year old, a small, shy monkey caught in the Rif, and later an old eagle with clipped wings and talons which, the donor explained, would defend the little lord from snakes and such-like. Concerning these living toys, Sa?d II. displayed a devouring curiosity and no fear at all. When the monkey clicked her teeth at him he gurgled and pulled her tail till she escaped up the wistaria. He pursued the eagle on all fours, caught it sleeping one afternoon, and hung doggedly on till he had pulled a tail feather out. The bird looked dangerous, Sa?d II. bubbled delightedly and grabbed for another feather, whereat the eagle retreated hastily to sulk among the orange shrubs. Was the door left open for a minute, Sa?d II. was out of it on voyages of high adventure.
Once he was arrested by the guard at the Ahmar Gate, plodding cheerfully on all fours for open country, and returned, kicking and raging, in the arms of a laughing petty officer.
Ortho himself caught the youngster emerging through the postern onto the Royal parade ground.
“He fears nothing,” Ourida exulted. “He will be a great warrior and slay a thousand infidels—the sword of Allah!—um-yum, my jewel.”
That battered soldier and turncoat infidel, his father, rubbed his chin uneasily. “M’yes . . . perhaps. Time enough yet.”
But there was no gainsaying the fierce spirit of the Arab mother, daughter of a hundred fighting sheiks; her will was stronger than his. The baby’s military education began at once. In the cool of the morning she brought Sa?d II. to the parade ground, perched him on the parapet of the Dar-el-Heni and taught him to clap his hands when the Horse went by.
Once she hoisted him to his father’s saddle bow. The fat creature twisted both hands in the black stallion’s mane and kicked the glossy neck with his heels, gurgling with joy.
“See, see,” said Ourida, her eyes like stars for radiance. “He grips, he rides. He will carry the standard in his day zahrit.” The soldiers laughed and lifted their lances. “Hail to the young Kaid!”
Ortho, gripping his infant son by the slack of his miniature jellab, felt sick. Ourida and these other simple-minded fanatics would beat him yet with their fool ideas of glory, urge this crowing baby of his into hardship, terror, pain, possibly agonizing death.
Parenthood was making a thoughtful man of him. He was no longer the restless adventurer of two years ago, looking on any change as better than none. He grudged every moment away from the Bab Ahmar, dreaded the spring campaign, the separation it would entail, the chance bullet that might make it eternal.
His ambition dimmed. He no longer wanted power and vast wealth, only enough to live comfortably on with Ourida and young Sa?d just as he was. Promotion meant endless back-stair intrigues; he had no taste left for them and had other uses for the money and so fell out of the running.
A Spanish woman in the royal harem, taking advantage of her temporary popularity with Mahomet, worked her wretched little son into position over Penhale’s head and over him went a fat Moor, Yakoub Ben Ahmed by name, advanced by the offices of a fair sister, also in the seraglio. Neither of these heroes had more than a smattering of military lore and no battle experience whatever, but Ortho did not greatly care. Promotion might be rapid in the Shereefian army, but degradation was apt to be instantaneous—the matter of a sword flash. He had risen as far as he could rise with moderate safety and there he would stop. Security was his aim nowadays, a continuance of things as they were.
For life went by very happily in the little house by the Bab Ahmar, pivoting on Sa?d II. But in the evening, when that potential conqueror had ceased the pursuit of the monkey and eagle and lay locked in sleep, Ourida would veil herself, wind her haik about her and go roaming into the city with Ortho. She loved the latticed souks with their displays of silks, jewelry and leather work; the artificers with their long muskets, curved daggers, velvet scabbarded swords and pear-shaped powder flasks; the gorgeous horse-trappings at the saddlers’, but these could be best seen in broad daylight; in the evening there were other attractions.
It was the Djeema-el-Fna that drew her, that great, dusty, clamorous fair-ground of Morocco where gather the story-tellers, acrobats and clowns; where feverish drums beat the sun down, assisted by the pipes of Aissawa snake charmers and the jingling ouds and cymbals of the Berber dancing boys; where the Sultan hung out the heads of transgressors that they might grin sardonically upon the revels. Ourida adored the Djeema-el-Fna. To the girl from the tent hamlet in the Sahara it was Life. She wept at the sad love stories, trembled at the snake charmers, shrieked at the crude buffoons, swayed in sympathy with the Berber dancers, besought Ortho for coin, and more coin, to reward the charming entertainers. She loved the varied crowds, the movement, the excitement, the din, but most of all she liked the heads. No evening on the Djeema was complete unless she had inspected these grisly trophies of imperial power.
She said no word to Ortho, but nevertheless he knew perfectly well what was in her mind; in her mind she saw young Sa?d twenty years on, spattered with infidel blood, riding like a tornado, serving his enemies even as these.
Ferocious—she was the ultimate expression of ferocity—but knowing no mean she was also ferocious in her love and loyalty; she would have given her life for husband or son gladly, rejoicing. Such people are difficult to deal with. Ortho sighed, but let her have her way.
Often of an evening Osman Baki came to the house and they would sit in the court drinking Malaga wine and yarning about old campaigns, while Ourida played with the little ape and the old eagle watched for mice, pretending to be asleep.
Osman talked well. He told of his boyhood’s home beside the Bosporus, of Constantinople, Bagdad and Damascus with its pearly domes bubbling out of vivid greenery. Jerusalem, Tunis and Algiers he had seen also and now the Moghreb, the “Sunset land” of the first Saracen invaders. One thing more he wanted to see and that was the Himalayas. He had heard old soldiers talk of them—propping the heavens. He would fill his eyes with the Himalayas and then go home to his garden in Rumeli Hissar and brood over his memories.
Sometimes he would take the gounibri and sing the love lyrics of his namesake, or of Nêdim, or “rose garden” songs he had picked up in Persia which Ourida thought delicious. And sometimes Ortho trolled his green English ballads, also favorably received by her, simply because he sang them, for she did not understand their rhythm in the least. But more often they lounged, talking lazily, three very good friends together, Osman sucking at the hookah, punctuating the long silences with shrewd comments on men and matters, Ortho lying at his ease watching the brilliant African stars, drawing breaths of blossom-scented air wafted from the Aguedal, Ourida nestling at his side, curled up like a sleepy kitten.
Summer passed and winter; came spring and with it, to Ortho’s joy, no prospect of a c............