The Mating of the Blades/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
In which Hector breaks the seal of the ancient prophecy and finds that blood is thicker than water, thicker than the clogging, stinking dust of the centuries.
Yet, going back to the old nurse's vituperations and tears and frantic appeals to Allah, the Prophet, and a variety of Moslem saints that reverberated through the Gengizkhani palace from turret to cellar, causing the eunuchs to touch their blue beads as a protection against evil, and the servants huddled over the cook pots to cringe as if expecting a beating, it was perhaps natural enough that the princess, in a moment of exuberant joy, should have obeyed the strange summons without suspecting a trap.
For, after all, a high-caste Oriental girl is in everything except a frank knowledge and discussion of sex questions and a certain familiarity with the tortuous mazes of palace politics, very much like a European or American girl hedged in by the gently nefarious and nefariously gentle, inhibiting social regulations that are the result of the Mid-Victorian inheritance of cant—the world, to both the former and the latter, offering nothing to do except a rather functionless existence varied by calls, genteel literature, genteel athletics, and genteel dusting.
In the case of the European girl, it is the parent who does the step-by-step supervising, while in that of Aziza Nurmahal it was the old nurse who ruled, socially, for all her menial position.
Thus the little princess was unprepared to cope with the unexpected—such as the strange summons.
A summons—by the lips of a rough, fur-capped Afghan charpadar who had bullied his way past the sentinels, through outer and inner courtyard, up the stairs, and into the ante-room of the harem where he had startled a pert-eyed, golden-skinned slave girl into attention by methods peculiar; methods that combined bribery, flattery, brutality, and open, rather riotous love-making.
Tell the princess that I am here!” he had said, with a lordly air.
“Thou?” The girl had made a mocking salaam. “And who then art thou? Art thou the Ameer of Bokhara? The Amban of Kashgar? The Rajah of Karpathala? Or perhaps His Majesty the yellow Emperor of far China himself?”
He had flipped a coin into her ready hand.
“One thing I would like to be,” he had replied, staring at her out of his bold eyes until she had blushed, “and one thing I am!”
“Yes?”
“Indeed, O Small Bud to be worn in the Turban of my Heart! For I would like to be thy lover! I would like to crush thy lips with mine. I would like to hold thy soft, trembling body with the impatient strength of my arms. But—by the scarlet pig's bristles!—it is only the vain wind of desire tickling my nostrils and shortening my breath. For thou art a perfumed jewel, palace born, palace bred, palace spoiled. The longing in thy downy heart is for a silk clad, jessamine scented courtier, while I”—and he had had the unblushing effrontery to simulate a melancholy sigh—“am only a rough Afghan, a Soleymani of Soleymanis!”
“What then dost thou want with the princess—being only an Afghan?”
“News—I bring her! Splendid news! Happy news! Joyful news! News slashed with sun gold and nicked with the moon's silver glitter! News that will cause her to fill thy lap and mine with seventeen camels' loads of red Persian gold! But—the message is secret, Rejoicer of Souls! There must be no blabbing to that dried-up and malodorous goat udder of an Ayesha Zemzem, nor to that cousin of a dung heap who calls himself Al Nakia, nor to any leaky palace tongue. These be news only for the princess' rosy ears!"
“But—consider the laws of the harem …”
“Consider the pimples on the back of a cockroach! Laws! Do not quote laws to an Afghan. To do so would be like reciting the Koran to the buffalo about to gore thee. Away with thee, O Small, Soft Thing"—pinching her cheeks—“and call thy mistress!”
The slave girl had left, to return, a few minutes later, with the princess who, at the Afghan's first words, spoken in a very low voice, had burst into a shout of joy, and a quick exclamation of:
“The Haj—” as quickly stopped by the man's warning hiss:
“No, no, Heaven-Born! Be careful!”
And he had whispered to her at length, winding up with “I do not know his reasons. I am his servant. I listen and I obey. And so I gave thee the message he gave me. Come with me—at once—Heaven-Born!”
Just for a moment the princess had hesitated.
“I—I can't go alone with thee,” she had said, but with a light in her eyes, as if she would like to be persuaded that she could.
“Why not?”
“It is against the customs …”
“Of the harem! Of course!”
The man had laughed ironically, had grumbled, then, with a shrug of his shoulders, had continued:
“It is against my orders. But thou art the Princess Aziza Nurmahal, the ruler of this land, and, if thou dost insist, take a servant along—one servant—perhaps this little slave girl?”
“No. I shall take my chief eunuch!”
“Good. That should be enough to guard even as lacy and twisted a thing as Tamerlani propriety and Tamerlani etiquette. But—thou must hurry. Why? Who am I to know, Heaven-Born? I am only a rough Afghan executing the orders he gave me. Come—and tell that little ball of quivering, soft nothings over there”—indicating the slave girl who was trying to catch a word now and then—“to be silent about the whole affair—silent as the sands.”
The princess had spoken to the slave, enjoining her to secrecy, had left, and had returned, shortly afterwards, veiled from head to foot in a swathing, disfiguring black horsehair ferauj, and accompanied by Mahsud Hakki, the chief eunuch to whom she had evidently confided the story of the mysterious summons; for the Nubian was laughing with a great flash of even, white teeth and waving a plum-colored paw at the Afghan in hearty greeting.
'Many, many moons have I longed for the sight of the Hajji Akh—”
“Silence, babbler!” had come the Afghan's rough, angry interruption. “Walls have ears—and so have”—he had walked up to the slave girl and had shaken her—“so have little, soft, downy things! Little, soft, downy things that will have their ears cut off if they babble and blab!”
Then all three had left, leaving the harem by a back stairway that led to the kitchen and was hardly ever used this time of the day, down to a small, walled garden heavy with the acrid scent of marigold and the pungent sweetness of red jessamine, thence by an underground passage known only to a few that, running for nearly a mile, opened, through a grass covered, intricate trap door, into a curious congeries of houses not far from the Ghulan River, within sight of the dead Ameer's mausoleum—the combined Hell's Kitchen, Rue de Venise, and Pimlico of the capital, the hiding-place of those who were in distress, and in debt, and in trouble of every kind; a place where brawling and bibbing of forbidden spirits and murder were the order of the day; where vice ran freely in and out of a dozen painted doors, where the pungent fumes of the Black Smoke rose nightly in morose spirals, where recklessness dwelt side by side with shame, and shame with disease … the slums of Tamerlanistan—the mildewed spot in the healthy plant of the town.
Thus Afghan, eunuch, and princess had left the sheltered security of the palace, the latter's heart beating like the heart of a girl in finishing school who, for the first time in her life, unchaperoned, unbeknown to parents and teachers, goes to a matinée with a member of the male sex; while the little slave girl had looked after them in a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, but obeying the injunction of silence and secrecy which Aziza Nurmahal had put upon her.
The little slave girl had been rather prey to conflicting emotions. For she had overheard some of the Afghan charpadar's words, and less hedged in by inhibiting conventions, had been conscious of a faint, marring taint of treachery in the Afghan's hearty words and jovial manner. But she feared the princess' quick tongue—just a shade less than she feared the old nurse's quick hand.
So she had waited, nervously expectant, wishing for the princess' return; and then, two hours later, excited sounds had come from the palace courtyard, cries, and a question peaking out from the turmoil:
“Mahsud! Mahsud Hakki! What has happened—for the love of Allah?”
And Ayesha Zemzem, who had been peacefully dozing over a soothing pipe of yellow Latakia tobacco cut with dawamesk-hashish, had jumped up, immediately wide-awake as is the habit of old people, had rushed down the stairs, out to the courtyard, and had found there, supported by half-a-dozen soldiers and servants, the moaning, blood-covered figure of the chief eunuch.
He had died even as Ayesha Zemzem reached his side; had died, 'with the words on his frothing lips:
“Aziza Nurmahal—the mausoleum—the Afghan—Hajji Akhbar Khan …”
And, with a choked rattling noise in his throat, he had sunk on the ground, one hand flung across his lacerated face as if to ward off Fate.
“Aziza Nurmahal? Hajji Akhbar Khan? The Afghan—what Afghan? What is all this blabbing and gabbing?” the old nurse had demanded, looking down at the dead man as if she wanted to shake the answer from his limp body; and, more gently:
“Who murdered thee, faithful old friend?! Who …”
She had interrupted herself, had turned to the tense, startled crowd of servants and soldiers and courtiers, taking charge of the situation as usual.
“Where is the princess?” she had continued. “Go—somebody—and fetch her. Perhaps she has the key to this pukka devil's mystery!”
It was then that Kumar Zaida, the little slave girl who had joined the group, had decided that she must tell what she knew; and she had told about the rough Afghan charpadar, how he had come with a mysterious message for the princess, how he had whispered to her, how she herself had not been able to understand every word, but, judging from scraps of talk here and there, believed that the Afghan had come as a messenger from Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, returned from the far places who, it seemed, was awaiting the princess in the mausoleum of the late Ameer, by the banks of the Ghulan River.
“Allah!” Ayesha Zemzem had exclaimed. “A clumsy trap! There is nothing near that part of the river banks except desolation! A trap fit for idiots and unthinking children! And, dost thou mean to say, Kumar Zaida, that thou …?”
“Who was I to argue?” the slave girl had defended herself. “The princess ordered me to be silent. The Afghan, too, said it was important that nobody knew about the message or the going. Maybe”—bold and arrogant since she knew that she would get a beating whatever happened—“maybe they did not trust thee, old woman …”
But her last words had been swallowed in the nurse's furious, high-pitched demand:
“Why didst thou not come to me, fool? Why didst thou not tell me, O daughter of a mangy and very unbeautiful she-pig?”
Flopp!—her bony old hand descended on the girl's bare shoulder; and then came the scene which so boisterously interrupted the prosy business discussion between Hector Wade and Mr. Ezra Warburton, the former dashing off at a thundering gallop, and Ayesha Zemzem raging through the palace like a miniature whirlwind of fury … fury suddenly scotched, as she entered the princess' apartment and, looking about her, discovered that the ancient, straight-bladed sword was not in its accustomed place, nor anywhere else, though she searched the rooms thoroughly.
The ancient sword which had been across the dead Ameer's knees during the funeral procession!
The sword with which Aziza Nurmahal had enforced her will when Koom Khan had spoken mutinous words!
The sword which, according to the tradition of the Gengizkhani family, would mate with the other blade, the one which Hector Wade had found in the lumber room of Dealle Castle and which had been the cause of all his twisted, motley adventures!
The sword with which even at that moment Aziza Nurmahal was defending herself, stabbing and cutting until her slim arms ached and her breath came in short, staccato bursts, while the Afghan charpadar, who, with a great, bellowing laugh, had declared himself to be Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, governor of the western marches—“and soon thy husband, little princess, soon the father of thy sons, soon Ameer of Tamerlanistan!”—kept dancing away from her, catching blows and thrusts on his metal-bossed arm shield, without using his own weapon.
“For I do not wish to injure thee, O Moon of Delight! And soon thou wilt be tired with this dancing about and unwomanly wielding of steel. And then I shall gather thee in my arms and carry thee away, and—ahee!—but thou shalt find my love strong and I thine sweet!”
Abderrahman Yahiah Khan had no thought for Mahsud Hakki, the eunuch, whom he had cut down as soon as they had entered the mausoleum. The man had crawled away, mortally injured, doubtless to bleed to death somewhere by the deserted river bank.
And the princess fought on, frightened, in despair, but resolved with all the stubbornness of the Gengizkhani blood to die rather than submit, the point of her sword dancing in ever weakening circles, while, back in the palace, the old nurse raised lean arms to heaven.
“By Allah and by Allah!” the nurse exclaimed. “The little princess has more sense than I thought! Enough sense, at least, to have taken along the Luck of the Gengizkhani—and if Al Nakia reaches there in time, both ancient blades will sing the song of blood together. Wooing indeed! Mating indeed! As swords and men and women should mate—in battle! Perhaps”—she whispered—“perhaps it is not too late …”
And she sank on her knees, facing Mecca, and cried as if her heart would break, and prayed, fervently:
“Against the night when it overtaketh me, and against the black lust of the wicked and the bad, I betake me for refuge to Allah, the Lord of Daybreak! O Allah, speed Thou Al Nakia's horse! O Allah, listen Thou to the prayer of this foolish old woman! O Allah, do Thou protect and save the little princess who is to me like the light of a friendly house in the screaming night of storms—who is the cradle of my soul—who is the inner jewel in the shrine of my withered heart!”
Thus the prayer on Ayesha Zemzem's lips; and a prayer, too, was in the heart of Hector Wade as he rode through the streets of the town, scattering the haggling market throngs, driving some into doorways and coffee houses and mosques, causing others to snap their fingers rapidly to ward off evil spirits; for, assuredly, Al Nakia had lost the light of his reason. He, the strong, the gentle, the just, to graze a little playing child in the fury of his gallop, causing it to cry and sob and run, frightened, to its mother—he, the sober, the sane, the patient, to leap his horse across a lumbering ox cart that was not quick enough to get out of his way!
“By the Prophet!” said an old market woman, pityingly, “the stars in his soul have turned black! Madness is upon him!”
And, superstitiously, she touched the little blue-enameled “hand of Ali” she wore in her flat bosom, while Hector thundered on, twisting and turning through the twisting, turning streets, toward the baroque mass of the mausoleum that loomed up in the distance. On!—though his horse was ready to give up, its head bowed on its heaving, lathering chest, the lungs pumping the hot air painfully with a deep, rattling noise.
But he bent over the animal's neck, lifting it with every stride.
They stared after him, the men of Tamerlanistan, some angry, some mocking, some astonished; then, presently, as the tale of the trap into which Aziza Nurmahal had fallen drifted out of the palace on the servants babbling lips and was repeated from mouth to mouth, in bazaar and mosque and caravanserai, there were expressions of sympathy and pity; and there was more than one, peasant and noble, merchant and green-turbaned, wide-stepping shareef, who threw leg across saddle and was off after Al Nakia's flying figure to help.
But they did not catch up with him, who was riding as he had never ridden before, his left hand twisted in the horse's braided mane after the rein had broken under the strain and the surcingle was beginning to split, sliding the huge saddle to a dangerous angle.
On!—past bazaar and mosque and scarlet-flaming garden, with the gray dust swirling up in spirals, and doorways and posterns echoing the click-click-clicketty-click of the horse's feet; straight through a kafila of shaggy, northern dromedaries dragging along their loads over the cobble-stoned pavement, scattering on the market-place a desert man's impromptu camp fire, frightening the tiny donkeys that tripped under their burdens of charcoal and fiery-colored vegetables and onyx-eyed Persian pussy cats, pirouetting dangerously amongst the two-wheeled country carts that cluttered the souk!
Off and away!—kicking loose his feet from his stirrups and letting the saddle drop to the ground from underneath him, as girth and surcingle burst completely, jerking the horse to one side so that its frantic feet did not strike the saddle's horn nor become en tangled in the leathers, and riding the animal bare-back, sitting tight and hard on the high-peaked withers.
The ancient Oriental blade was in his hand as he jumped from the horse and rushed thorough the open door of the mausoleum.
“Aziza! Aziza Nurmahal!”
His call echoed through the vaulted, white-stuccoed halls where slept the princess' ancestors, from the rough shepherd who, followed by a few thousand yellow-skinned, high-cheeked men on horseback, had swept out of Central Asia, conquering the world from Pekin to the gates of Berlin, to the last male member of the Gengizkhani clan, the princess' father, who had spent a life-time sidestepping the financial traps, the “concessions,” of these same Occidentals whom once his ancestors had subjugated and ruled with rope and flame and scimitar.
The ironic thought flashed through Hector's mind even as, from an inner chamber, came an answering call:
“Thank Allah!”
Then hysterical laughter; a man's acrid curse; a clanking of steel against steel—and Hector reached the chamber whence the cry had come, took in the scene at a glance—the girl, weakened, out of breath, but still pluckily defending herself against Abderrahman Yahiah Khan—and he was at him, the point of his weapon dancing before him like a lambent flame.
Up till this moment Abderrahman Yahiah Khan had been merely playing with the princess; had not wished to do her a bodily injury. Perhaps, now, suddenly, his love for her—for love it was, though rough, boisterous, cruel—turned into the primitive desire of primitive man that she, who could not be his, should never belong to anybody else, chiefly not to this upstart of a saheb who, according to Koom Khan's tale, had gained her love and was aspiring to the throne. Perhaps, thus, for a passing moment, he made up his mind to kill her. Heretofore, he had not used his sword, had only defended himself with his metal-bossed arm shield.
Now he was about to draw …
But, by this time. Hector's weapon was approaching him in dancing, narrowing circles, while the princess, regaining her flagging strength, was about to thrust in and under his skillfully handled shield. He heard the ominous crackle of steel from both sides, both blades flickered toward his heart like messengers of death, the hilt of his own sword, when he tried to draw, caught in the folds of his voluminous waist shawl; and so, suddenly, but serenely, he did what most Asiatics would have done under the circumstances.
Fight the inevitable?
And what price was there in that, what pride, what logic? Was there price and pride and logic in one's own bleeding, mutilated corpse? Was there not far greater price and pride and logic in one's living body, though it be humbled through the stress of circumstance—of force majeure?
Why—outside, on the banks of the Ghulan River, the koil-birds were singing their throaty song of life and love; the little, green ceratrophys toads were sounding their basso notes; the very trees were alive with the breeze of spring, and the sky was blue and endless … Life, all around him!
Why then choose death?
Not he!
And so, skillfully, suddenly, just as the blades met above his head, he ducked, sat down quickly on the ground, kowtowed, and remarked, without the slightest taint of shame or self-consciousness:
“It appears that I am vanquished. I am thy slave, Al Nakia—and thine, Aziza Nurmahal!”
With which he groped in his waist shawl, drew out a match and a sadly crumpled cigarette, lit it, and remarked, to nobody in particular, that even to the noblest of men kismet was always kismet, and that all came from Allah, the good as well as the evil.
“Thus—let us not cavil at the evil! It would be blasphemy unspeakable!”
Hector dropped the point of his sword. He laughed, frankly, loudly. He could not help himself. The governor's effrontery was too colossal.
Then, again, as he looked at the princess, as he saw the delicate splendor of her face, the warm golden tint of her skin, the magnificent curve of breast and hip for all her slimness, the long, narrow, pleasurable hands, and the huge eyes which shone like star-sapphires; as he saw her firm, red lips, those lips that held the eternal invitation of all womankind; together with a curious, rather impersonal kind of jealousy, since he did not love her, a great rage rose in his throat that the other should have thought of making her his.
And again he raised his sword, to the little princess' encouraging shouts of “Kill him, Al Nakia! Kill him!” while Abderrahman Yahiah Khan sighed resignedly, rather pathetically, with an expression in his eyes, his lips, the drooping of his shoulders which seemed to say that Hector was taking an unfair ad vantage of him and that it was thus his right to feel hurt and abused.
For be it remembered that he was an Oriental; not the type of Eastern potentate one sees so much in England and occasionally in New York, flashing the motley silk of his turban through the gray, stony thoroughfares of the West, a man spoilt in a way yet bred to the most delicate finesse of feelings and manners and emotions; but that he, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, was an Oriental born and bred in the gutters of some reeking bazaar, who had lived the haphazard life of Eastern childhood with no lessons except those of his ancient race, the crooked, crowded streets, and once in a while a word of meaningless Koranic wisdom from the lips of some supercilious graybeard. When he had reached his twelfth year, manhood had come to him—sudden and a little cruel, as it comes to the children of Asia—and with it both the passions and the responsibilities of manhood. Hereafter he had had to make his own way—his own way compared to which that of a New York newsboy is a path of roses, since the West holds firm to that weakening philosophy called sympathy of which the East knows nothing and wants less—through the strength of his brain and his body, every step on the ladder of success marked by the blood and sufferings of some one weaker than himself, until to-day he was what he was—shrewd, but callous; a man whose enthusiasm was without warmth, whose brutality with out imagination, whose passion without delicacy, whose submission without shame.
And, without shame, he looked up at Al Nakia, and, using the Oriental metaphor which corresponds to the plain English advice not to make a fool of himself, he said:
“Al Nakia—remember: 'He of great head becomes a king, he of great feet a shepherd!' What wouldst thou gain by killing me? Once I am dead, thy rage will be spent, and what profit then to thee, Heaven-Born? To kill means but a momentary revenge—and what gain is there in that?”
“The gain that I know thee to be dead—that never again thou wilt be able to make mischief!”
“Better far to grant me life—and to trust me!”
“Trust—thee?” Hector was utterly amazed.
“I am shrewd, Al Nakia.”
“Granted,” said Hector, curious what was to come next.
“I know this country, every inch of it, chiefly the western marches.”
“Thou dost, assuredly.”
“I have at my command my own troops, too, the men of Musa Al-Mutasim.”
“Precisely.”
“I have a large store of rifles and ammunition.”
“So I've heard.”
“Higgins saheb and the other saheb are at my headquarters.”
“Exactly!” rejoined Hector, who was getting impatient. “Thou art a traitor, and now thou art in my hands, as powerless as a trapped jackal, and …”
“Heaven-Born! Heaven-Born!” exclaimed the governor, shaking a finger as he might at a recalcitrant child. “If I were powerful and swore fealty to thee, thou wouldst be right in not trusting me. For, powerful, I would strive for yet more power, would try to usurp thy place—as I did in the past. But, shorn of my power, in thy hands, under the heel of thy mercy, thus deprived of everything except what thou wouldst grant me, I should be forced to be loyal to thee through self-defense!”
“Look here,” began Hector who, in his honest British way, was more indignant at the man's Jesuitic casuistry of reasoning than at his treachery.
But the governor continued, very gently:
“Grant me life, Heaven-Born, and I shall pay for it a thousand times over. For I love life and what life brings.” Here he winked, shamelessly, at the princess who, Oriental to the marrow, was beginning to admire, even respect, the man's enormous, serene astuteness. “Grant me life, and then fortune will come to thy hand, unasked, like a courtezan—or a dog.”
And it was racially, culturally typical of Aziza Nurmahal that she, who at first had been more intent upon the man's instant death than Hector Wade, was also first to forget her hatred the moment she understood that he would be more valuable to her alive than dead—an instance of that Oriental immorality which, at times, turns out to be decidedly more constructive and humane than the case-hardened prejudices, virtues, and ethics of the moral-ridden Occident.
Seeing Hector hesitate, she took charge of the situation.
“I grant thee life, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan,” she said. “Tell me. How wilt thou pay for it?”
“How?” smiled the governor, rising; and, hereafter, he disregarded Hector completely, and addressed himself directly to the princess. “Ahee! Thou art indeed of the blood of the Gengizkhani, twin sister to the gray-wolf, and thou wilt appreciate my shrewdness—and my loyalty!”
And he proceeded to sketch a naïvely brutal plan by the help of which he would, in payment for his life “and a few minor things of which I shall talk presently, when thy heart, O Aziza Nurmahal, is less bloated with evil and bitter thoughts against me,” change sides. He would turn over his military establishment, including Musa Al-Mutasim's choice gang of ruffians and the rifles and ammunition which Mr. Preserved Higgins had given him, to the Tamerlanistan government, surrender the Cockney and the other saheb:
“… to be severely dealt with as, by Allah, they deserve! And, henceforth, I shall become a law-abiding citizen and a stout pillar of the state. It will be easy. A word from me to my captains will be sufficient. As to Musa Al-Mutasim, it may be advisable to have his head cut off. Thus,” he added, piously, “shall we all be happy and contented and save much blood. And”—he smiled, vulpinely—“Higgins saheb and the other saheb and perhaps Musa Al-Mutasim will pay, and then everything will be as Allah willeth.”
“Good, good!” cried the princess, to whose eastern brain all this seemed supreme logic and wisdom; and even Hector, while not admitting the logic, had to admit the wisdom, and though at first he had been shocked at the enormous, serenely unblushing unmorality of the project, he understood that after all it would be the right thing to accept it. He saw that, automatically, it would spell the end of all turmoil and once more bring back to Tamerlanistan its old peace and prosperity.
Therefore, when shortly afterwards a troop of Tamerlani soldiers and naibs drew rein at the mausoleum and invaded the place, sword in hand, threatening revenge against the treacherous governor of the western marches. Hector stepped between them and their intended victim, and asked them to take the man to the palace and to see that no harm came to him.
“No harm indeed!” echoed the governor to his twin brother and worst enemy, the governor of the eastern marches, who was amongst the crowd and had already raised his short, wicked sword. “Back to thy kennel, O dog, unbeautiful and decidedly objectionable, or I shall torture thee the torture of the boiling oil! For behold, O thou fetid hyena, I am in high favor with the princess and Al Nakia—because of my wisdom, my courage, my clean manliness, and my shining loyalty!”
And he strutted out with a considerable swagger, followed by the astonished Tamerlanis, while Hector Wade, laughing in spite of himself, turned quickly as he heard the princess' whispered words:
“The blades! The ancient blades! The blade of the East and that of the West! Thy blade and mine, Al Nakia! The blades of the prophecy—which saved me—which saved Tamerlanistan
And then, realizing that here for the first time since he had come to Tamerlanistan he was alone with the princess without hidden eyes and ears watching and listening from behind the rustling zenana curtains, that here for the first time he had a chance to ask her straight out for a solution of the mystery. Hector demanded, rather bluntly:
“Tell me, Aziza. What is all this mad talk of blades and the wooing of blades? What is this ancient prophecy to which all the world seems to have the key except myself?”
She looked up, utterly astonished.
“Thou dost not know?”
“I have guessed, a little. But—well—I don't know.”
“Then why didst thou come here? Why didst thou sacrifice thy life, thy strength, thy energy, for this land, for me? If thou wert in love with me—which thou art not …”
“Which indeed I am not,” smiled Hector, “though I am thy friend.”
“And I thine. The best friend in the world—friend closer than a brother …”
“Rather!” said Hector to himself, thinking, bitterly, of his brother Tollemache, for whose sake he had taken on his shoulders the burden of dishonor; while the princess continued:
“Yes. We are friends. But—even so—why didst thou come here in the first place? What, if thou knowest nothing of the prophecy of the swords, made thee leave thy own country? What made thee come to India, to the house in the Colootallah? And by what right hast thou this in thy possession?”—touching the sword which rode at his hip.
“By what right hast thou the sword of the Gengizkhani, the sword of my clan?” Her eyes flashed fire. Her narrow hands opened and shut spasmodically. Her voice rose to a minatory treble, with that sudden, killing, unreasonable burst of temper which is the heritage of Arab blood. “I—I am thy friend! But if that which is whispered in the western marches is true—if, indeed, thou art an impostor, and not Al Nakia, not the 'Expected One'—then I shall …”
Hector cut through her words with a sharp gesture. He smiled, rather ruefully, and assured her that he had come into possession of the blade honestly enough, that it had been amongst the heirlooms of his family, and that, ever since he could remember, it had had a curious influence over him …
“As if this bit of steel had a soul!” Easily, naturally, unself-consciously, he expressed in Persian the things which inhibition of race and training would have made impossible for him in English. “When I held the blade in my hand, even when I was a small boy, wings from the past, serene and gigantic and compelling, seemed to bear me toward an ancient destiny. It seemed as if the blade would cut through the tangled web of all my doubts and riddles and sorrows of life—would help me to recover something very precious which I had lost … something …”
He interrupted himself.
“I am expressing myself crudely,” he said. “I can't tell what …”
“I understand!” Aziza Nurmahal slipped her hand into his. “Thou art the 'Expected One!' Tell me—everything!”
And he told her how, according to the traditions of the Wades of Dealle, he had been forced to shoulder the guilt of his older brother, had left his father's house taking nothing with him except the blade; and he went on until he came to the curious advertisement in the newspaper, the offer to buy swords at fair prices, and the even more curious figure of the old Oriental dealer in Coal Yard Street, off Drury Lane.
“What did this old Oriental look like?” she asked; and Hector described him as well as he could, adding that he bore a curious resemblance to the Tamerlani merchant in Calcutta at whose house he had first met her.
“Might have been his brother—they looked so much alike,” he wound up.
“Indeed!” laughed the princess. “For they are brothers. The man to whom you took the blade is Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, my father's most trusted friend, who went to the far places to …”
“To do what?”
“To hunt for the sword of the Gengizkhani. To find a descendant of that Englishman to whom once the sword was given, by my ancestor, centuries ago. To find thee, O Al Nakia, O Truly Expected One. To prove the truth of the old prophecy, when it appeared that my father was on his death bed and the land would be left in my weak hands. To prove, too, that blood is thicker than the clogging dust of the centuries, and that Allah does not bring two human souls together in sport, to whirl them apart again as the sand storm whirls the yellow grains of the desert!
“The prophecy?” she went on. “The prophecy of the blades which thou dost not know in thy mind, but which thou knowest in thy soul? Listen! Thou, who earnest out of the West, heeding the silent call which drew thee to the East—thine own East! For cousin thou art to me. Thou, too, hast Gengizkhani blood in thy veins, the blood of the ancient, undying race, and thou showest it in this—and that—and this!” indicating his high cheek bones, his black, curly hair, his aquiline nose with the nervous, flaring nostrils which, according to Sussex tradition, had been the racial inheritance of some Spanish sailor shipwrecked on England's white cliffs in the days of the Armada and Good Queen Bess.
“Cousin to me!” she repeated, with a little lilt in her voice, like the lilt of an old, sweet song.
And she told him how her own people, the Gengizkhani, the descendants of Genghiz Khan the Great on the male and of the Prophet Mohammed on the female side, had once ruled all Central Asia, from the Outer Mongolian snows to the scorched plains of Rajputana, from Anatolia to Chinese Turkestan, from the painted gates of Moscow to the ragged basalt frontier of Siam and Amoy; how they had fought hard to conquer, harder yet to hold their princely inheritance, and how amongst the many adventurers who left Europe for Asia in search of excitement and treasure, there had been a young Englishman.
He became an officer in the army of the Gengizkhani Ameer, whose name was Jaffar Sirajud-din, finally rising to the rank of captain-general, but there were bitter words when he fell in love with the Ameer's youngest daughter, Khadijah Sultana.
There was a fight, a duel; English blade against Tamerlani blade. The Ameer was vanquished and, prostrate on the ground, the point of the other's weapon flickering above his heart, he agreed to the marriage.
But, since Khadijah Sultana had been won in battle, instead of an exchange of rings, there was an exchange of swords.
Shortly after the birth of her little son, the princess died. The Englishman took the child, and returned to his native country; and the prophecy said that, before he left, he swore a most solemn oath to the Ameer that whenever a Gengizkhani needed the sword of his English cousins, the latter must obey the summons.
But, back here in the heart of Asia, in the course of the centuries, while they remembered the prophecy itself, the ancient prophecy which said that, in the Gengizkhani's hour of need, a man would come out of the West, in his hand the blade of Jaffar Sirajuddin, they had forgotten the name of the Englishman and his family. All they had to link them with the past was the Englishman's sword, the one with which he had vanquished the Ameer and conquered his bride, with its escutcheon engraved on the hilt, and a description of the Gengizkhani sword which the foreigner had taken with him.
When Aziza Nurmahal's father was on his death-bed, Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, understood that there would be trouble with the Europeans begging and bribing and bullying for “concessions,” with none left of the old clan except a young girl unused to the intrigues of the palace, the mosques, and the bazaars, with the land sure to be torn by civil strife unless a strong man's hand took the helm of the ship of state.
Thus the Hajji had gone to the far places, to Europe, to England, on his mad search for the possessor of the Gengizkhani blade.
“And he found thee, Al Nakia!” the princess wound up.
“Yes! He found me! And I found him. I found—all that—yonder!”
He pointed to where, under the rays of the sun, the flat, white roofs of the capital poured to the dip of the river, while, farther east, a chain of hills rose in even tiers, sharp and terse, then softened marvelously until, in the farthest east, they curved inward like a bay of darkness, stretched out into a high table land, and soared into two cube-shaped granite hills which looked like the pillars of a gigantic gate.
The gate of this far Central Asian land which had called to him with the call of the blood!
The call of the ancient centuries, the mysterious, atavistic energy which, more even than the sword of the Gengizkhani, had driven him across the world!
English out of Sussex he was. Yet this land, too, was his! This land—and its destinies!
Instinctively, he had taken the princess' hand. Now he dropped it, letting the softly clinging fingers slip from his own, as, clear through the other thoughts, cut a minor thought, disturbing, disconcerting.
“Why didn't the Hajji explain the prophecy to me?” he asked. “Why did he let me go—oh—blindfolded?”
The princess shook her head.
“I don't know, Al Nakia,” she replied. “But, doubtless, his reasons were good and wise. Whatever they were, they were just. For, always, has the lamp of his knowledge made clear the path from hearth stone to byre. And to-day—see!—the prophecy of my clan has been fulfilled, all but …” she smiled a little self-consciously, slurred and stopped.
Hector, too, smiled—a frankly boyish smile.
“Thou meanest that about the—wooing of the swords?”
“Yes.”
“Too bad,” he rejoined, uncompromisingly English for all his Persian phraseology. “Too bad that thy heart, Aziza Nurmahal, and mine are not hushed in the same sweet dream, that my heaven is not fulfilled in thy soul and body, nor thy heaven in mine.”
“Then,” asked the princess, just a little mischievously, “thou lovest—somebody else?”
“Yes,” replied Hector, thinking of Jane.
“And so do I!” said the princess, thinking of the stranger who had stared at her, bold, unashamed, that day in the bazaar.
And they sighed and looked at each other, rather like two sentimental children, unhappy, yet, somehow, more pleased than otherwise at their own unhappiness, and left the mausoleum; and they returned through the streets of the town, acclaimed by peasant and noble, by merchant and priest, back to the palace whose turrets and domes burned under the rays of the late afternoon sun like the plumage of a gigantic peacock, in every mysterious blend of blue and green and purple.
As usual, the outer courtyard was a warren of teeming humanity and humanity's wives and children and mothers-in-law and visiting country cousins: saises and grass cutters, cooks and courtiers and mahajuns and paunchy assistants of Gulabian, villagers from the countryside come to present a petition or to call on friend and relative in the palace service, desert men who had brought the slim taxes of the farther lands, wealthy thakur sahebs, landed gentle men, in immaculate white and immense turbans, Babus fondly hugging huge account books bound in soft Bokhara leather, sellers of shawls and perfumes, of Persian brocade and gold-threaded Fyzabad muslin and all the many other things which are bought by the women of the harem; all talking, laughing excitedly … raising shrill voices of welcome as the princess, by Hector's side, passed through the gate, with Gulabian's tall fur cap bobbing up and down as he made salaam after salaam, and the old nurse acting as a sort of impromptu choir leader.
“Alhamdulillah!” she cried. “Thou hast come back to us, O Aziza Nurmahal, O great soul of my little and worthless soul! Thou hast touched with the flame of thy return the lightless lamp of my sorrow!”
“And thou, O Al Nakia”—turning to Hector and clutching him in a bony embrace—“thou hast blown away the dead leaves that flitted in the wind of my grief! Thou art the sunshine that trickles through the patter of the gray rain. Thou …”
She turned and faced Babu Chandra, who was plucking at her sleeve:
“What is it, O he-goat?”
The Babu overlooked the insult and addressed himself direct to Hector, speaking in that chaos of murdered English slang that, since he was a Babu, was as dear to him as the crimson caste mark on his forehead.
“Saheb!” he said. “Regret to report that Warburton saheb had to leave in regular old whirlwind of a hurry.”
“That so?” asked Hector, who had forgotten all about the American.
“Yes. His daughter has been jolly well copped by no end of jolly, fat old ruffian—right-oh!” said Chandra, with the self-conscious pride and satisfaction peculiar to the bearers of bad tidings.