“The walls have ears.”—Arabic Proverb. Helen Raynor lay like a broken lily, asleep upon a divan piled with cushions, in a great room built between two ledges of rock high up on the mountainside.
The place was bare, save for rugs upon the floor and the cushions of every colour of the rainbow, embroidered in gold, patterned in jewels, and quite unfit for an invalid’s repose.
It was refreshingly cool in spite of being nearer the scorching sun than any other part of the erstwhile monastery. A great slab of rock, many feet in thickness, jutting from the mountainside, made a natural ceiling; huge brass bowls full of water stood on the rock floor; the desert winds of dawn and sunset blew in at the cross-shaped apertures which took the place of windows in the east and west walls, built of pieces of stone of all shapes and sizes, fitted together in mosaic fashion and two feet thick; the door faced the cleft in the mountain ring, and through it could be seen the limitless desert, a view of infinite peace.
An austere place, imbued with quiet strength, an eyrie of peace, conjuring up pictures of abstinence and sacrifice, it stood as it had been built all those centuries ago by the Holy Fathers for their prior, connected with the plateau by a dizzy flight of steps leading straight down to the water which Sir Richard had hoped to discover for the good of mankind and his own satisfaction.
Namlah, the native woman, shivered as she sat outside on the edge of the platform upon which the place had been built, but as much from the effect her surroundings were[115] having upon her as from the chill breeze of dawn. She got to her feet, her many anklets jangling as she moved, and walked to the edge of the rock ledge and looked down at the water and shivered again and sighed.
Zarah the Cruel had made the biggest mistake of her life when, in a fit of towering rage, she had set Namlah to tend and guard Helen Raynor. She had thought to set a jailer at the girl’s door; she had placed a friend. She had thought to take the body-woman’s thoughts away from her dead son by piling still more work upon the bent shoulders; instead she gave her hours in which to sit, to dream, to plan out some way in which to revenge herself for the loss of her child.
Her son had not returned from the disastrous battle. He lay somewhere out there in the desert. Her son was dead. And when, mad with grief, she had flung herself at her mistress’s feet and begged to be allowed to go and find him and bury him, she had been struck across the mouth and ordered up to the dwelling where the prisoner lay, and threatened with still more dire punishment if she told the white girl aught about the secrets of the place.
And what could worse punishment mean but the death of the one son left her? The dumb boy she loved even more than she had loved the one who had not returned from battle; the boy who had been nicknamed “Yussuf’s Eyes,” and who spoke by tapping with his slender fingers upon the blind man’s arm, and almost as readily and clearly as if he used his silent tongue.
Grief and a great fear filled her heart.
What if Zarah the Merciless took this son? She touched an amulet of good luck which hung about her neck and turned to draw an extra covering over the prisoner left in her care.
“Beautiful! Beautiful!” she whispered, gently stroking the golden hair she delighted to brush for the hour together, and which covered the girl, like a veil, to her[116] knees. “What will be thy fate in the hands of the one who knows no mercy?” She spat as she spoke and sat down at the foot of the divan. “Thou a slave who art a queen in beauty? Thou to obey where thou hast ruled, to go when ordered, to come when bidden? Nay! Allah protect thee and bring thee safely through that which awaits thee. I love thee, white woman, for thy gentleness in thy distress. Not one harsh word in the days when the fever ran high; not one black look in these days when thy weakness is as that of the new-born lamb. Behold, is this the time to replace about thy neck the amulet which fell from thy strange clothing when I did take them from off thee, thou white flower?” She searched in her voluminous robes and drew out a small golden locket on a broken chain, and sat turning it over and over in her hand, fighting a great temptation. She fingered the brass bracelets and the silver ring she wore and rubbed the gold chain against her pock-marked cheek.
“The amulet, yea, that will I not keep, for fear I rob the white woman of her birthright of happiness; but the chain, of what use is it to her? It is thin and broken....” She twined it round her wrist, looking at it with longing eyes, then, with a little sigh, unwound it and slipped it round the girl’s neck and, knotting the broken ends, hid the locket under the silken garment and ran out quickly on to the platform.
She sat just outside the door, indifferently watching the starlit sky with twinkling eyes in a wry face.
“Behold, I love thee,” she whispered, “and would bring thee back to health. Not alone because of my love for thee, but for that within me which tells me that ‘the time approaches when a camel will crouch down on the place of another camel.’” She rubbed her work-worn hands as she quoted the proverb and pondered upon the happy day when the reigning tyrant should be dethroned and someone with bowels of compassion should be elected[117] in her stead. She turned her sleek head and looked once again at the girl, and fingered her brass bracelets and smiled, as she quoted another proverb, until her perfect teeth flashed in the dusk. “‘He who cannot reach to the bunch of grapes says of it, it is sour.’ Behold, I think the golden chain would not have become my beauty.” She rose as she spoke, laughing, with the childlike happiness of the Eastern who is pleased, and crossed to a small recess, where she made great clatter amongst many brass pots in the process of concocting a strong and savoury broth.
She stood for a moment watching Helen, who had wakened at the noise and lay looking out through the cleft in the mountains to the desert.
For three weeks, so far as she could judge, she had lain ’twixt fever and stupor in the strange room, tended by a middle-aged native who put her finger to her lips when questioned.
Three weeks of agonizing uncertainty as to the fate of those she loved, in which in her delirium she had fought maddened men and beasts or sobbed her heart out in the native’s arms. Twice she had crawled to the platform and tried to descend the steps to reach her grandfather, whom she thought to see standing upon the river bank. Not once had she been aware of Zarah standing behind her as she lay on the bed, with a mocking smile on the beautiful, cruel mouth and a look of uncertainty in the yellow eyes.
She had questioned the native woman, imploring her to give her news of the caravan, promising her her heart’s desire if she could but obtain authentic information about the man she loved. She had begged for her clothes, and when they had been refused had tried to rise from her bed, only to fall back, weak and exhausted from the fever which had resulted from the horror and shock of the battle and the terrible ride, during which, at the last, she had mercifully lost consciousness.
[118]
“Am I in the hands of Zarah, the mysterious woman of the desert?” she had whispered to the native the first day her senses had come back to her. “Has a white man been also taken prisoner? Is there any help for us?”
Namlah had looked furtively over her shoulder and had put her finger upon her lips as she had whispered back:
“‘The provision of to-morrow belongs to to-morrow’ is a wise saying, Excellency. Rest in peace whilst yet peace is with thee. ’Tis wise for the hare to abide beneath ground when the hawk hovers, and for the lamb to make no sound when the jackal prowls. ’Tis twice wise for the eyes to be wide open and the mouth shut when those who are in power are likewise in wrath.” She had bent over the girl as she had arranged the cushions, and had whispered lower still: “Trust not the news of her mouth, Excellency; it is as a well of poisoned water in which truth dies. There is one here whose words are as pure gold, though his eyes are like burned-out fires. When he brings news I will bring it thee. Thou may’st trust me.” She had slipped the cotton garment from her back as she spoke. “The marks of the whip that lashed my back are as naught compared to the wounds of grief which the greed and tyranny of our mistress have caused to cut deep into my heart.” She had stroked the girl’s hair and patted her hand when she had cried out at the sight of the great scars, and had waited upon her and nursed her, loving her the while.
“I waited for thee to waken, Excellency,” she whispered this hour before the dawn. “Al-Asad has but just returned; he speaketh even now with Zarah the Cruel.”
And having bathed Helen’s temples and wrists and fed her with much strong broth, Namlah crept noiselessly down the steep steps to the broad terrace where her mistress dwelt, and crouched, a shadow amongst shadows, under the window made by the Holy Fathers centuries ago.
[119]
She stayed, crouched against the wall, listening to the voices of her mistress and Al-Asad the Nubian. Unable to catch their words, she touched the amulet at her neck and rose, inch by inch, until the top of her head was on a level with the window’s lower edge.
“Of a truth wert thou cunning ...” she heard her mistress say, losing the rest of the sentence in the peal of laughter that followed.
Complete silence fell, and the night air became the heavier for the scents of musk, myrrh, attar and other such overpowering perfumes beloved of the Oriental, which floated through the window. Namlah sniffed appreciatively, then, too small to see above the window ledge, and with curiosity rampant in her heart, crouched down again until she knelt upon the rock, and felt around with slender, nimble fingers for the wherewithal with which to raise herself the necessary inches that would enable her to see into the room without being seen.
She found nothing, but, spurred by the sound of her mistress’s voice, slipped out of her voluminous outer robe, rolled it into a bundle and stood upon it, a wizened, dusky slip of an eavesdropper, in a coarse, unembroidered qamis.
“‘A small date-stone props up the water jar,’” she quoted, as with one brown eye she looked furtively into the room from the side of the window.
She drew her breath sharply. Simple in her wants, as are all the natives of the serf-like class, she had never been able to get over the astonishment she felt at the sight of the luxury with which her mistress surrounded herself.
The rough stone walls built by the Holy Fathers and the uneven stone floor had been covered with marble of the faintest green, cunningly worked along the edges in a great scroll pattern of gold mosaic. The scroll glittered in the light of four lamps hanging in the corners of the immense room, reflecting all the colours of the rainbow[120] in their crystal chains and crystal drops. The drops and chains were reflected in a basin of pink marble in the centre of the room, and in five huge mirrors which the Arabian’s colossal vanity had caused her to place about. Gold and silver fish swam monotonously round and round in the marble basin, happily unconscious of the moment awaiting them when the woman would catch them in her dainty, henna-stained fingers and throw t............