He led her out of the shed, walking close to her. A loving couple, people would have thought; and none to know that, hidden by the folds of the man’s cloak, a dagger was pressed against the small of the woman’s back.
By this time, the merry-making had ceased. There came the booming of the sunset gun from the great Mosque where, in the west, it raised its minaret of rosy marble. There came, immediately afterwards, the muezzin’s throaty chant that the Night of Honor, the Night of Fear and Repentance, was near; and then lights were extinguished everywhere against the malign flitting of the dark and evil djinns, and the places of worship were filled with the Faithful, the streets and alleys became deserted.
Not a wayfarer anywhere. Hardly a sound.
Only, as a sturdy stallion with two in the saddle rode through the northern gate, a sleepy sentinel’s challenge:
“Who goes there?”
“A merchant and his wife.”
“Travel in peace, O Moslems!”
So Fathouma and Omar the Red were off at a gallop; while at just about the same time, when Omar the Black returned to the palace, there was a Persian lackey telling him a terrible tale—a tale of heroism, showing, in proof, various bruises and even a bandaged shoulder and explaining how he had been attacked by a shoda, a rough customer, had been kicked, cuffed, knocked down, sliced and stabbed with a number of sharp weapons.
With a great throng of men, each intent on his own brawl, all about him, he had been helpless; and—Allah!—the cruel, brutal strength of this red-bearded scoundrel.…
“Eh?” interrupted Omar the Black. “You—you said red-bearded?”
“Superbly, silkily red-bearded. And hook-nosed. And armed to the teeth.…”
“And with an evil glint in his eyes?”
“Most evil!”
* * * *
The Persian went on to relate that here he was, prone on the ground, grievously wounded. And there was the other, with the Heaven-born in a faint and slung across his shoulders as if she were a bag of turnips; and the man’s parting words had been:
“Take a message to Omar the Black. Tell him to come quickly, and alone, and with a queen’s ransom in his breeches. Let him take the Darb-i-Sultani, the King’s Highway, straight north into High Tartary. And, presently, at a place of my own choosing, I shall have word with him.”
Such was the lackey’s story; and Omar the Black did not doubt it, since he knew his brother.
What puzzled him later on—and what, indeed, he cannot understand to this day, though frequently he has asked his wife about it—was what she did or, rather, what she did not do.
Why—he wondered—did she not resist? Why did she neither struggle nor cry out?
“How could I?” she would explain. “At first I thought he had come to rescue me. I was grateful.”
“Still—after you discovered that he…?”
“I was helpless. I am a weak woman—and there was the point of his dagger pressed against my spine.”
“Even so—when you passed, on the saddle in front of him, through the gate—a word to the sentinel…”
“It would have been my last. The dagger…”
“Omar the Red would not have carried out his threat.”
“How was I to know? Such a scoundrel, this brother of yours—you yourself used to tell me—and not at all to be trusted.”
* * * *
So, afterwards, was Fathouma’s explanation; and we repeat that Omar the Black—and small blame to him—was puzzled.
But, at the time of the kidnaping, the only emotion he felt was worry. Dreadful worry. Why, he loved his wife—and ho, life without her, like a house without a light, a tree without a leaf…
As soon as Hossayn told him the news, he took all his money, all his jewels and whatever of Fathouma’s he could find. As an afterthought, he went to the shop of Baruch ben Isaac ben Ezechiel, the rich Jew.
Better too much treasure—he reflected—than too little. He told himself—since, after all, in spite of his worry, he was still the same Omar the Black—that loot was loot and would always come in handy. Therefore, courteously, he asked for credit; was courteously granted it—for was he not the husband of a Tartar Princess and a captain in the Khan’s palace guard?
The merchant salaamed.
“Do not worry about credit, lord. Take whatever you wish.”
Omar wished a lot, took a lot; and, within the hour, followed his wife and his twin brother up the Darb-i-Sultani, into the north.
All night he rode and all the following morning.
At first, near Gulabad, the land was fertile, with tight little villages and checkerboard fields folded compactly into valleys where small rivers ran. But, toward noon, the steppe came to him.
The heart of the steppe.
The heart of High Tartary.
* * * *
IT came with orange and purple and heliotrope; with the sands spawning their monotonous, brittle eternities toward a vague horizon. It came with an insolent, lifeless nakedness; and when, occasionally, there was a sign of life—a vulture poised high on stiff, quivering wings, a jackal loping along like an obscene, gray thought, or a nomad astride his dromedary, his jaws and brows bound up in mummy-fashion against the whirling sand grains, passing with never a word of cheerful greeting—it seemed a rank intrusion, a weak, puerile challenge to the infinite wilderness.
A lonely land.
A harsh and arid land. No silken luxury here. No ease and comfort.
The heat was brutish, brassy. His rheumatic leg ached.
Yet, gradually, he became conscious of a queer elation.
It had been long years—he told himself—since he had left High Tartary. Nor had he ever wished to return. Still—why—it was his own land, his dear land.… “Yes, yes!” he cried; and, almost, he forgot what had taken him here, almost forgot Fathouma. “Here—rain or shine, cloudy sky or brazen sun—is my own land, my dear land! Here is freedom! And here, ever, the stout, happy heart!”
He put spurs to his horse and galloped on, grudging each hour of rest. And afternoon died; and evening brought a gloomy iridescence, a twilight of pastel shades, a distant mountain chain with blues and ochres of every hue gleaming on the slopes; and a few days’ ride beyond the range—he knew—was Nadirabad nestling in the shadows of the old, ancestral castle; and he dismounted and made a small campfire; and night dropped, suddenly, like a shutter, the way it does on the steppe; and out of the night came a mocking call:
“Welcome, brother!”
Omar the Red stepped from behind a rock; and Omar the Black jumped up, sword in hand.
“Dog with a dog’s heart!” he yelled.
“I shall fight you for Fathouma!”
“Fight? No, no! You shall pay me for her—and, by the same token, live up to our agreement.”
So, since curses and threats did not help matters, there was, presently, a deal of money thrown on the ground and a wealth of glittering jewels—some come by honestly, and some less so.
“Enough,” remarked Omar the Red “to pay back the debts to the Nadirabad merchants—and to lift the mortgage on the castle—and for Ayesha and me to live on comfortably for a number of years.”
“For