Two-Gun Bob, page 181
V
In the Great East Palace, where slave-girls and eunuchs glided on stealthy bare feet, no echo reverberated of the hell that raged outside the walls. In a chamber whose dome was of gold-filigreed ivory, Al Hakim, clad in a white silk robe that made him look even more ghostly and unreal, sat cross-legged on a couch of gemmed ebony, and stared with his wide unblinking eyes at Zaida the Venetian who knelt before him.
Zaida was no longer clad in the rags of a slave. Her dolyman was of crimson Mosul silk, bordered with cloth-of-gold, her girdle of satin sewn with pearls. The fabric of her wide bag drawers was sheer as gossamer, seeming to glow softly with the pink flesh it scarcely veiled. Her ear-rings were set with great pear-shaped jewels. Her long lashes were touched with kohl, her fingers tipped with henna. She knelt on a cloth-of-gold cushion.
But amidst all this splendor, which outshone anything even this play-thing of princes had ever known, the Venetian’s eyes were shadowed. For the first time in her life she found herself actually to be a plaything. She had inspired Al Hakim’s latest madness, but she had not mastered him. A night, an hour, she had expected to bend him to her will. Now he seemed withdrawn from her, and there was an expression in his cold inhuman eyes which made her shudder.
Suddenly he spoke, ponderously, portentously, like a god voicing doom: “It is not meet that gods mate with mortals.”
She started, opened her mouth, then feared to speak.
“Love is human and a weakness,” he continued broodingly. “I will cast it from me. Gods are beyond love. And weakness assails me when I lie in your arms.”
“What do you mean, my lord?” she ventured fearfully.
“Even the gods must sacrifice,” he answered somberly. “Love of a human is blasphemy to the godhead. I give you up, lest my divinity weaken.”
He clapped his hands deliberately, and a eunuch entered on all-fours – a newly instituted custom.
“Send in the emir Othman,” ordered Al Hakim, and the eunuch bumped his head violently against the floor and backed awkwardly out of the presence.
“No!” Zaida sprang up in a frenzy. “Oh my lord, have mercy! You can not give me to that black beast! You can not –”
She was on her knees, catching at his robe, which he drew back from her fingers.
“Woman!” he thundered. “Are you mad? Would you draw doom upon yourself? Would you assail the person of God?”
Othman entered uncertainly, and in evident trepidation; a warrior of barbaric Darfur, he had risen to his present high estate by wild fighting and a brutal form of diplomacy.
Al Hakim pointed to the cowering woman at his feet and spake briefly: “Take her!”
The Sudani never questioned the commands of his monarch. A broad grin split his ebon countenance, and stooping, he caught up Zaida, who writhed and screamed in his grasp. As he bore her out of the chamber, she twisted in his arms, extending her white hands in passionate entreaty. Al Hakim answered not; he sat with hands folded, his gaze detached and impersonal as that of a hashish eater. If he heard the screams of his erstwhile favorite, he gave no sign.
But another heard. Crouching in an alcove, a slim brown-skinned girl watched the grinning Sudani carry his writhing captive up the hall. Scarcely had he vanished when she fled in another direction, garments caught up above her twinkling brown legs.
Othman, the favored of the caliph, alone of all the emirs dwelt in the Great Palace, which was really an aggregation of palaces united in one mighty structure, which housed thirty thousand servants of Al Hakim. He dwelt in a wing that opened on to the southern quarter of the Beyn el Kasreyn. To reach it, it was not necessary for him to emerge from the palace. Following winding corridors, crossing an occasional open court paved with mosaics and bordered with fretted arches supported on alabaster columns, he came to his own house.
Black swordsmen guarded the door of black teak, banded with arabesqued copper which separated his quarters from the rest of the palace. But even as he came in sight of that door, down a broad panelled corridor, a supple form glided from a curtained doorway and barred his way.
“Zulaikha!” The black recoiled in almost superstitious awe; the woman’s slim white hands clenched and unclenched in a refinement of passion too subtle and deep for his brutish comprehension; and over the filmy yasmaq her eyes burned like gems from hell.
“A servant brought me word that Al Hakim had discarded the red-haired slut,” said the Arab. “Sell her therefore to me! For I owe her a debt that I fain would pay.”
“Why should I sell her?” objected the Sudani, fidgeting in animal impatience. “The caliph has given her to me. Stand aside, woman, lest I do you an injury.”
“Have you heard what the Berbers shout in the streets?” she asked.
He started, greying slightly. “What is that to me?” he blustered, but his voice was not steady.
“They howl for the head of Othman,” she said coolly and with venom. “They call you the murderer of Zahir el Ghazi. What if I went to them and told them that what they suspect is true?”
“But I had naught to do with it!” he exclaimed wildly, like a man caught in an unseen net.
“I can produce men to swear they saw you help Zaman cut him down,” she assured him.
“I’ll kill you!” he whispered.
She laughed in his face.
“You dare not, black beast of the grass lands! Now will you sell me the red-haired jade, or will you fight the Berbers?”
His hands slipped from their hold and let Zaida fall to the floor.
“Take her and begone!” he muttered, his black skin ashen.
“Take first your pay!” she retorted with vindictive malice, and hurled a handful of coins full in his face. He shrank back like a great black ape, his eyes burning red, his dusky hands opening and closing in helpless blood-lust.
Ignoring him, Zulaikha bent over Zaida, who crouched dazed with sick helplessness, crushed by the realization of her impotence against this new conqueror, against whom, as a member of her own sex, all the witchery and wiles she had played against men were helpless. Zulaikha gathered the Venetian’s red locks in her fingers and forcing her head brutally back, stared into her eyes with a fierce and hungry possessiveness that turned Zaida’s blood to ice.
The Arab clapped her hands and four Syrian eunuchs entered.
“Take her up and bear her to my house,” Zulaikha ordered, and they laid hold of the shrinking Venetian and bore her away. Zulaikha followed, her pink nails sinking into her palms, as she breathed softly between her clenching teeth.
VI
When Diego de Guzman plunged through the window, he had no idea of what lay in the darkness beneath him. He did not fall far, and he crashed among shrubs that broke his fall. Springing up, he saw his pursuers crowding through the window he had just shattered, hindering one another by their numbers. He was in a garden, a great shadowy place of trees and ghostly blossoms. The next instant he was racing among the shadows, weaving in and out among the shrubbery. His hunters blundered among the trees, running aimlessly and at a loss. Unopposed he reached the wall, sprang high, caught the coping with one hand, and heaved himself up and over.
He halted and sought to orient himself. He had never been in the streets of El Kahira before, but he had heard the inner city described so often that a mental map of it was in his mind. He knew that he was in the Quarter of the Emirs, and ahead of him, over the flat roofs, loomed a great structure which could be only the Lesser West Palace, a gigantic pleasure house, giving onto the far-famed Garden of Kafur. Fairly sure of his ground, he hurried along the narrow street into which he had fallen, and soon emerged on to the broad thoroughfare which traversed El Kahira from the Gate of el Futuh in the north to the Gate of Zuweyla in the south.
Late as it was there was much stirring abroad. Armed Memluks rode past him; in the broad Beyn el Kasreyn, the great square which lay between the twin palaces, he heard the jingle of reins on restive horses, and saw a squadron of Sudani troopers sitting their steeds under the torchlight. There was reason for their alertness. Far away he heard tom-toms drumming sullenly among the quarters. Somewhere beyond the walls a dull light began to glow against the stars. The wind brought snatches of wild song and distant yells.
With his soldier’s swagger, and saber hilt thrust prominently forward, de Guzman passed unnoticed among the mailed and weapon-girded figures that stalked the streets. When he ventured to pluck a bearded Memluk’s sleeve and inquire the way to the house of Zulaikha, the Turk gave the information readily and without surprize. De Guzman knew – as all Cairo knew – that however much the Arab had regarded Al Hakim as her special property, she had by no means considered herself the exclusive possession of the caliph. There were mercenary captains who were as familiar with her chambers as was Al Hakim.
Zulaikha’s house stood just off the broad street, built closely adjoining a court of the East Palace, to the gardens of which indeed it was connected, so that Zulaikha, in the days of her favoritism, could pass between her house and the palace without violating the caliph’s order concerning the seclusion of women. Zulaikha was no servitor; she was the daughter of a free shaykh, and she had been Al Hakim’s mistress, not his slave.
De Guzman did not anticipate any great difficulty in obtaining entrance into her house; she pulled hidden strings of intrigue and politics, and men of all creeds and conditions were admitted into her audience chamber, where dancing girls and opium offered entertainment. That night there were no dancing girls or guests, but a villainous looking Yemenite without question opened the arched door above which burned a cresset, and showed the false Moor across a small court, up an outer stair, down a corridor and into a broad chamber into which opened a number of fretted arches hung with crimson velvet tapestries.
The room was empty, under the soft glow of the bronze lamps, but somewhere in the house sounded the sharp cry of a woman in pain, accompanied by rich musical laughter, also in a woman’s voice, and indescribably vindictive and malicious.
But de Guzman gave it little heed, for it was at that moment that all hell burst loose outside the walls of El Kahira.
It was a muffled roaring of incredible volume, like the bellowing of a pent-up torrent at last bursting its dam; but it was the wild beast howling of many men. The Yemenite heard too, and went livid under his swarthy skin. Then he cried out and ran into the corridor, as there sounded the swift padding of feet, and a laboring breath.
In a nearby chamber, straightening from a task she found indescribably amusing, Zulaikha heard a strangled scream outside the door, the swish and chop of a savage blow, and the thud of a falling body. The door burst open and Othman rushed in, a wild and terrifying figure, white eyeballs and bared teeth gleaming in the lamplight, blood dripping from his broad scimitar.
“Dog!” she exclaimed, drawing herself up like a serpent from its coil. “What do you here?”
“The woman you took from me!” he mouthed, ape-like in his passion. “The red-haired woman! Hell is loose in Cairo! The quarters have risen! The streets will swim in blood before dawn! Kill! kill! kill! I ride to cut down the Sunnite dogs like bamboo stalks. One more killing in all this slaughter means nothing! Give me the woman before I kill you!”
Drunk with blood-hunger and frustrated lust, the maddened black had forgotten his fear of Zulaikha. The Arab cast a glance at the naked, quivering figure that lay stretched out and bound hand and foot to a divan. She had not yet worked her full will on her rival. What she had already done had been but an amusing prelude to torture, mutilation and death – agonizing only in its humiliation. All hell could not take her victim from her.
“Ali! Abdullah! Ahmed!” she shrieked, drawing a jeweled dagger.
With a bull-like roar, the huge black lunged. The Arab had never fought men, and her supple quickness, without experience or knowledge of combat, was futile. The broad blade plunged through her body, standing out a foot between her shoulders. With a choked cry of agony and awful surprize she crumpled, and the Sudani brutally wrenched his scimitar free as she fell. At that instant Diego de Guzman appeared at the door.
The Spaniard knew nothing of the circumstances; he only saw a huge black man tearing his sword out of the body of a white woman; and he acted according to his instincts.
Othman, wheeling like a great cat, threw up his dripping scimitar, only to have it beaten stunningly down on his woolly skull beneath de Guzman’s terrific stroke. He staggered, and the next instant the saber, wielded with all the power of the Spaniard’s knotty muscles, clove his left arm from the shoulder, sheared down through his ribs, and wedged deep in his pelvis.
De Guzman, grunting and swearing as he twisted his blade out of the prisoning tissue and bone, sweating in fear of an attack before he could free the weapon, heard the rising thunder of the mob, and the hair lifted on his head. He knew that roar – the hunting yell of men, the thunder that has shaken the thrones of the world all down through the ages. He heard the clatter of hoofs on the streets outside, fierce voices shouting commands.
He turned toward the outer corridor when he heard a voice begging for something, and wheeling back into the chamber, saw, for the first time, the naked figure writhing on the divan. Her limbs and body showed neither gash nor bruise, but her cheeks were wet with tears, the red locks that streamed in wild profusion over her white shoulders were damp with perspiration, and her flesh quivered as if from torture.
“Free me!” she begged. “Zulaikha is dead – free me, in God’s name!”
With a muttered oath of impatience he slashed her cords and turned away again, almost instantly forgetting about her. He did not see her rise and glide through a curtained doorway.
Outside a voice shouted: “Othman! Name of Shaitan, where are you? It is time to mount and ride! I saw you run in here! Devil take you, you black dog, where are you?”
A mailed and helmeted figure dashed into the chamber, then halted short.
“What –? Wellah! You lied to me!”
“Not I!” responded de Guzman cheerfully. “I left the city as I swore to do; but I came back.”
“Where is Othman?” demanded Al Afdhal. “I followed him in here – Allah!” He plucked his moustaches wildly. “By God, the One True God! Oh, cursed Caphar! Why must you slay Othman? All the cities have risen, and the Berbers are fighting the Sudani, who had their hands full already. I ride with my men to aid the Sudani. As for you – I still owe you my life, but there is a limit to all things! In Allah’s name, get you gone, and never let me see you again!”
De Guzman grinned wolfishly. “You are not rid of me so easily this time, Es Salih Muhammad!”
The Turk started. “What?”
“Why continue this masquerade?” retorted de Guzman. “I knew you when we went into the house of Zahir el Ghazi, which was once the house of Es Salih Muhammad. Only a master of the house could be so familiar with its secrets. You helped me kill el Ghazi because the Berber had hired Zaman and the others to kill you. Good enough. But that is not all. I came to Egypt to kill el Ghazi; that is done; but now Al Hakim plots the ruin of Spain. He must die; and you must aid me in his overthrow.”
“You are mad as Al Hakim!” exclaimed the Turk.
“What if I went to the Berbers and told them that you aided me to slay their emir?” asked de Guzman.
“They would cut you to pieces!”
“Aye, so they would! But they would likewise cut you to pieces. And the Sudani would aid them; neither loves the Turks. Berbers and blacks together will cut down every Turk in Cairo. Then where is your ambition, when your head is off? I will die, yes; but if I set Sudani, Turk and Berber to slaying each other, perchance the rebellion will whelm them all, and I will have gained in death what I could not in life.”
Es Salih Muhammad recognized the grim determination which lay behind the Castilian’s words.
“I see I must slay you, after all!” he muttered, drawing his scimitar. The next instant the chamber resounded to the clash of steel.
At the first pass de Guzman realized that the Turk was the finest swordsman he had ever met; he was ice where the Spaniard was fire. To his reluctance to kill Es Salih was added the knowledge that he was opposed by a greater swordsman than himself. And the thought nerved him to desperate fury, so that the headlong recklessness that had always been his weakness, became his strength. His life did not matter; but if he fell in that blood-stained chamber, Castile fell with him.
Outside the walls of El Kahira the mob surged and ravened, torches showered sparks, and steel drank and reddened. Inside the chamber of dead Zulaikha the curved blades sang and whistled. Smite, Diego de Guzman! (they sang). Spain hangs on your arm. Strike for the glories of yesterday and the splendors of tomorrow. Strike for the thunder of arms, the rustle of banners in the mountain winds, the agony of endeavor, and the blood of martyrdom; strike for the spears of the uplands, the black-haired women, fires on the red hearths, and the trumpets of empires yet to be! Strike for the unborn kingdoms, the pageantry of glory, and the great galleons rolling across a golden sea to a world undreamed! Strike for the wonder that is Spain, aged and ever ageless, the phoenix of nations, rising for ever from the ashes of a dead past to burn among the standards of the world!
Through his parted lips Es Salih Muhammad’s breath hissed. Under his dark skin grew an ashy hue. Skill nor craft availed him against this blazing-eyed incarnation of fury who came on in an irresistible surge, smiting like a smith on an anvil.
Under the brown-crusted bandage de Guzman’s wound was bleeding afresh, and the blood poured down his temple, but his sword was like a flaming wheel. The Turk could only parry; he had no opportunity to strike back.
Es Salih Muhammad was fighting for personal ambition; Diego de Guzman was fighting for the future of a nation.
A last gasping heave of thew-wrenching effort, an explosive burst of dynamic power, and the scimitar was beaten from the Turk’s hand. He reeled back with a cry, not of pain or fear, but of despair. De Guzman, his broad breast heaving from his exertions, turned away.
