Swords From the Desert (25 page)

"Thou!"

"No help for it. Mahabat Khan is talking politics with the governor, and I must escort thee."

While he spoke he helped his man put clean linen on his slender figure, until he stood garbed in rose-pink brocade that heightened the color of the great emerald in his white headgear. Then he put on an embroidered coat with sleeves and collar edged with soft sable, and around his waist he wrapped a green and gold girdle, taking care to leave the coat open at his breast to show the fine brocade beneath. Then he washed his face and hands in water scented with attar of rose and slipped his feet into pearlsewn riding slippers. W'allahi, never had I seen such a splendid youth! I could not help looking down at my dull black headcloth and heavy brown mantle and dust-stiffened sandals, while Sher Jan walked around the minstrel, grunting his amazement and satisfaction at this elegance.

I told Kushal that I had need of no escort and that he was clad for an audience at court rather than a visit to a sick woman, and that, in any case, he would not be admitted to the presence of the hanim.

"If she is really beautiful," he smiled, "I will admit myself; if she is ugly I will go off without troubling you."

Eh, there was no checking him. On a freshly groomed white charger he galloped all the way to Kandahar, putting my fleet-footed mare to her best paces. He offered to buy the mare of me and, when I refused, to cast dice for both horses. At the gate of the mud wall where some Mogul soldiery lounged, he reined in until they scrambled up to salaam to him, thinking him a grandee of Ind.

Perforce, we had to wait for Sher Jan and his follower, who had done their best to keep up with us, without avail. They were far down the road. This interval of quiet the minstrel spent in gazing at the bare ridges to the north, red bulwarks against the blue of the sky.

"Those mountains are like sleeping lions, Daril," he said under his breath.

The tawny masses did have the shape of crouching beasts, and Kandahar itself stretched up toward them along a ridge, as if one of the lions had thrust a paw down into the plain. Outside the gray mud wall were endless orchards and hamlets of many people, Tajiks, Jews, Baluchis-the followers of the caravan track.

Inside the wall the city rose, tier above tier, crowning the summit of the ridge, to the yellow-stone citadel where the banner of the Mogul rose and fell in the wind gusts.

Sher Jan came up, beating his nag that he had borrowed or stolen in the night-and led us through the crowds and dust and kneeling camels of the marketplace, crying out to clear a path for us. Then he turned up the street that led toward the citadel. It was so steep that stone steps had been built at places, a dirt path being left for the horses. But Kushal urged his white charger up the stairs, mocking me when I did not follow.

Not until we were within arrow shot of the gate of the governor's castle did Sher Jan halt and peer at the walls of houses and courtyards that lined the street solidly on either hand. He quested about, and knocked at the wooden gate of a court.

The portals opened at once, without question or the barking of dogs. Sher Jan drew back, suspicious at this silence, but Kushal swung his horse aside from the steps and paced in.

A dozen armed men, who might have been Gypsies or Baluchis, stared steadily at his magnificent figure. They were lying around a fire, shivering under leafless poplars, even in the sun, for the winds of Kandahar came out of snow-filled gorges. Kushal greeted them, and one stepped forward to hold his horse. The one door of the white house behind the poplars opened and a bearded Persian came and stared in his turn from the minstrel to me. Seeing Sher Jan, his face cleared and he hastened to my stirrup, bidding me dismount and enter. But he would not allow Kushal to accompany me, and the minstrel kept his saddle.

I followed the bearded keeper of the door through a corridor and up a winding stair that ended in a curtain. Here, as if she had been listening for our steps, a young slave appeared out of a niche.

"The hakim-the hakim of Arabistan," explained he of the beard, and the veiled girl giggled when she salaamed, slipping through the curtain and beckoning me to follow.

The Persian folded his arms and took his stand at the head of the stair, as if to show me that he would stay there until I left.

I parted the curtain and went forward, feeling beneath my toes the richness of a fine carpet. Into my nostrils crept the scent of rose leaves and of the incense that smoldered within a copper jar before me.

The only light came from a round, heavily latticed window by the far corner, and the sun's rays, coming through the lattice, pierced dimly the hanging wreaths of smoke. Near at hand I heard the fluttering of birds, the whirr of wings and tiny scrape of claws.

"The carpet will not harm thee, 0 Shaikh! Sit, and fear not."

The voice was young and amused and so low that I barely heard the words above the stir of the hidden birds and splashing of a fountain.

"Nay, not there; here in the sun," it said.

So I seated myself under the window, drawing my mantle about me, and the speaker seemed to find more food for amusement in that.

"What is this? An old gray eagle! I thought thee a physician. Nay, thy manners smack of the tents, and thy sword is an omen of blood, and thy face is that of a father of battles."

"Can the eye of youth," I asked, "discern the wisdom of age? Judge thou whether I have a physician's skill or no."

By now I could see a couch under the round aperture, and upon the couch the outstretched form of a girl whose slender feet within touch of my hand were white as jasmine, whose ankles were bound with bracelets of flashing sapphires. Her head, unveiled, was no more than a shadow, beneath the smoke-clouded sunbeams. And yet the shadow seemed to be tipped with gold.

"But all physicians," she cried, "act in a manner that is not thine. Nay, they bow to earth and come forward with ready compliments and rare promises."

"No doubt they were Persians," I said and she laughed a little, for she spoke in the Persian manner, and boldly, as if she were a woman who knew how to command men.

"Wilt thou cure me by burning or by letting blood or by purging?" she asked.

"What troubles thee?"

She mused a space and said gravely that sleep would not come to her, and sometimes her eyes pained her.

"Stretch forth thy hand," I bade her.

I pressed my fingers upon the artery in her slender wrist. In leaning forward her head came more into the light, and I saw that her hair was yellow as sunburned wheat. And the touch of her skin was cool and moist, the beat of the pulse as true and mild as the drip of the fountain. I withdrew my hand.

"Thine eyes," I asked, "let me see them."

"The light pains them," she murmured, keeping in her shadow, and beginning all at once to chatter like a parrot aroused.

She questioned me as to my travels, and the road to Kandahar, and whether I had been robbed. To this I made answer that I had been captive to the Persians, and she clapped her hands, summoning the slave girl who brought sherbet, cold and sweet, and dates, full-flavored and good, like the dates of my land. I thought of Kushal, sitting impatient below, and smiled.

"Hanim," I said before tasting her offering. "I can do naught for thee. Thy health is good, and to my thinking all that ails thee is curiosity."

Once or twice before I had been summoned by women who had grown weary of confinement behind curtain and veil-who could go forth only to the mosque and the bath, and wished to hear talk of the world. In the shadow under the incense smoke her eyes dwelt upon me, whether amused or angry I could not know. I was ill pleased to be summoned thus at the whim of a girl, and the insistence of a camel driver; and yet, shameless though she must be, because unveiled, there was charm in the music of her voice.

"0 father of battles," she said reprovingly, "thy hand is more accustomed to the sword hilt than the lancet. I am weary for my land and feverish with longing for my mountains, the snow mountains by the Sea of the Eagles."

Verily, such longing can be no less than fever, and I too longed at times for the bare sahra and its clear night skies. Because it seemed to me that she had spoken the truth, and because I was partaking of her salt and perhaps because I wished to keep Kushal out in the courtyard where he could not stir up any mischief, I talked with her, answering the murmur of her questions.

She told me her name was Nisa. She was a Circassian, born in the mountain land of Persia, a singer who wandered from city to city. For months she had been pent up in Kandahar, because she feared to take the road down into Ind, where the riders of al-Khimar might despoil her of possessions or carry her off.

She asked me about my capture by the pasha, and l told her the truth-that I had seen this pasha, the ambassador of the great shah of Persia, slain in a hill tower, and the gifts he was escorting into Ind scattered among thieving Kurds. Then she asked me if I had seen any nobles of the shah hunting near the frontier.

"I shall go back," she cried softly, "if I can find protection upon the road. Kandahar is full of merchants and hillmen and 1 am weary of it."

"Would the shah's nobles hunt in winter?" I made response.

"Yea, if the whim came to them."

I told her I had passed only one camp, at a distance, where I had seen Persian Red Hat soldiery and many horses, doubtless the frontier guards.

And then Kushal made himself heard. A guitar struck the first light notes of melody, and he sang-I knew not what. Nisa grew silent at once, and I thought that she must have watched us from the window, because she made no effort to look out to see who the minstrel might be.

But the song had the rush of galloping hoofs and the ripple of laughter and the harsh notes of anger, and when I rose and looked through the lattice, I beheld Kushal on his white horse among the warriors of the courtyard. They were sitting, agape, grinning and listening with all their ears.

It was a Pathan love song, this-a thing of fire and grief and passion, and the warriors enjoyed it. When Kushal ceased and bent his head over the guitar and adjusted its strings, Nisa whispered a question.

"Who is the young lord?"

I told her that he was a minstrel of Mahabat Khan's, and she rose to her knees to watch him, the sunlight coming full against her face for the first time. W'allahi, it was my turn to stare!

Unveiled, clouded with pale gold tresses penned beneath a silver fillet, her eyes dark as pools at night, her lips small and fine as the seal of a signet ring, what a face it was! Too young for richness of beauty, too impulsive for peace of mind-it was the face of a child of peristan, of elfland, willful and careless and still tender.

And that moment Kushal chose to ride up under the window. Perhaps he could see her through the lattice or perhaps he heard her whisper, for his ears were keen as his wits and his head was no more than a lance length from the opening.

Nay, she did not complain then of the sun glare or of aching eyes, for she pressed close to the wooden fretwork, and Kushal surely beheld her face. An instant he stared, his fingers fumbling the guitar, then he smiled and salaamed, crying-

"The praise to God who created fair women! " Musing a moment he put his thought into song, choosing a lilting Persian melody, thus:

Nisa, resting on a slender arm, cuddled down to listen, and the slave girl clapped her hands soundlessly.

Not once did the songmaker seem to remember the armed henchmen at his back, nor did he once falter for a word.