He waited; listened tensely, then repeated the call—and the gate opened softly; and a small white-robed figure slipped out and rushed into his arms with a little cry of joy.
“O my beloved!”
“O soul of my soul!”
“O king!”
“O sweetmeat!”
They spoke in a whisper, at length. They laughed. They kissed. And presently Timur Bek returned to the roof-top of his house, where Omar the Black was pacing up and down impatiently, while Omar the Red was applying himself to a bottle of Persian wine.
“Well—?” demanded the former.
“I talked to my girl.”
“Not to the Khan?”
“She, as I told you, has the Khan’s ear. And it seems that he is willing to sell Gotha. But—”
“Is there a but?”
“Isn’t there always?” Timur Bek paused. “He is fond of her.”
“What’s that?”—excitedly.
“In a fatherly manner. Yes—as if she were his daughter. Therefore he insists that whoever buys the girl must marry her.”
“I—marry?”
“Yes. It is part of the bargain. You must marry her at once. Tomorrow evening, at the Mosque of Hassan. A simple ceremony, with no witnesses. The girl, being shy, insists on it.”
Omar the Black did not reply immediately.
Marriage, he reflected—as more than once, on his lawless path, his brother had reflected—meant bonds of steel. It meant the orderly homespun ways of life; meant—oh, all sorts of disagreeable things.… An end to freedom!
And it was on his tongue to exclaim: “No! Let Yengi Mehmet keep the girl!”
But he reconsidered as he thought of her—with her full red lips, and her brown hair as smooth as oil, and her gray eyes that seemed to hold all the secret wisdom, all the secret sweet mockery of womanhood.
Lovely! So very lovely!
He loved her.… Besides, coming to think of it, marriage was not necessarily the end. Bonds of steel, too, could be broken—by a strong and ruthless man.
“Very well,” he announced. “Marriage it will be.” And, severely, to his brother: “Let this be a lesson to you—to follow in my virtuous footsteps!”
“As virtuous,” remarked Timur Bek, “as mine own. For I too shall take a wife unto myself—the little slave-girl whom I love.”
“You have repaid your loan to the Khan?”
“Thanks to you, Great-Heart. Tomorrow morning my love and I are going away. Therefore if, for the time being, you and your bride and your brother would care to live in my house, you are welcome. There is food in the larder and wine in the cellar. And after all, with your jewels gone—”
“I shall be poor, I know.”
“Only,” chimed in Omar the Red, “until Baruch, the rich Jew, contributes another handful of gems.”
* * * *
Late on the following evening, Omar the Black, arrayed in some of his brother’s handsome clothes, went to the Mosque—an ancient and beautiful building raised on a flight of broad marble steps, its great horseshoe gateway covered with delicate mosaic arabesques in mauve and silver and heliotrope and elfin-green.
There the bride, wrapped from head to foot in three heavy white wedding veils, awaited him.
She saw his smooth cheeks. But she gave no more than a little start. For she had been warned of what had happened to his beard; and with or without his beard, she loved him—loved him dearly.
Slowly he walked up to her. He bowed—and so did she.
* * * *
Hand in hand they stepped before the green-turbaned priest, who united them in holy wedlock, according to the rites of Islam:
“Will you, O son of Adam, take this woman to wife—before God the One, and the Prophet the Adored, and the multitude of the Blessed Angels?”
“I will!”
“Will you, O daughter of Eve, take this man to husband—before God the One, and the Prophet the Adored, and the multitude of the Blessed Angels?”
“I will!”
Silence.… Omar the Black stared at his wife.
“Soon to be mine!” he whispered. “Soon—soon!”
Then there was the priest chanting a surah from the Koran in nasal, sacerdotal tones:
For the Merciful hath taught the Koran,
He created the male and the female,
He taught them clear speech,
He taught them desire and fulfilment.
An echo of His own creation.
So which of the Lord’s bounties would ye twain deny?
The sun and the moon in their courses,
And the planets do homage to Him,
And the heaven He raised it and appointed the balance,
And the earth He prepared it for living things.
Therein He created fruit, and the palm with sheaths,
And grain with its husks, and the fragrant herb,
And the male and the female of man and of beast.
So which of the Lord’s bounties would ye twain deny?
“Not I,” said Omar the Black to his wife, “to deny this particular bounty.”
She gave a happy little laugh; the priest finished; husband and wife salaamed toward Mecca; and then Omar took her to Timur Bek’s house, up to the rooftop beneath the stars.
There his brother was. He greeted the couple with loud shouts of:
“Yoo-yoo-yoo!”
But Omar the Black cut him short.
“Enough ‘yoo-yoo-yoo’ for the nonce,” he said. “This is the one moment—of many, many moments—when I can do without your company.”
So Omar the Red left—winking, in passing, at the bride. And a few seconds later, slowly and clumsily, since his hands trembled so, Omar the Black raised the three wedding veils one by one.
“Wah,” he whispered throatily, “you are all my dreams come true!”
Then, swiftly, he receded a step. For, with the moon laying a mocking silver ribbon across her features, he saw that the woman whom he had married was Fathouma, the Grand Khan’s sister, and not Gotha.
Omar stood there without speaking. He stared at her.
Even more faded she was than when he had seen her last; more gray the hair that curled on her temples; more sharply etched the network of wrinkles at the corners of her brown gold-flecked eyes. But still the same eyes—with the same tenderness in them, the same sweetness and simplicity, the same depth of feeling. Eyes that lit up as she said to him:
“You broke my heart, years ago, when you left me. But now, the Lord be praised, you have made it whole again.”
She walked up to him. And what could he do but take her into his arms?
“Last night,” she went on, “when Timur Bek sent me word through Gotha that you had come to Gulabad in search of me, that you wanted me—wanted me for wife—I almost