Agitated as he was, he still found her beauty breath-taking. Her curling hair, with its rich bronze lights, serene forehead, dark, tapering eyebrows, magnificent tawny eyes and red, full-lipped, cupid's-bow mouth were all as he remembered them and as he had so often visualized them when daydreaming about her. When he arrived at about ten feet from her divan he was about to bow to her but was not given the chance.
Two of the powerful eunuchs seized him by the arms, forced him to his knees, then pushed his head forward towards the floor, while the third shouted in the thin, high voice of a castrato:
'Down, Christian dpg! Down! Lick the floor in obeisance to Her Exalted Highness, daughter of the Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid, Descendant of the Prophet, Shadow of Allah upon Earth, Padishah and . .
He was still declaiming shrilly when one of the other eunuchs struck Roger a sharp blow on the back of the head. His face hit the marble floor with such force that his lips were bruised and his nose began to bleed. Jerking up his head he stared at Zanthe and exclaimed in French:
' Can that which was said in jest really be true? That . . . that you are a daughter of the Sultan? '
Her face remained impassive, but she gave a slight shrug and replied in the same language, '1 am the only daughter of the late Sultan. But do you take me for such a fool as to have revealed it to you while I was in Cairo? Had I done so when we first met you would have demanded a King's ransom for me and, on the second occasion, your General would have kept me as a valuable hostage.'
' But . . . but,' Roger stammered, ' how can you be? You . . . you said that you were French.'
'1 told you that my mother is French, and that is true.'
The enormity of his crime now came home to Roger. To lay hands on a woman of royal blood in any country was lese-majeste; and in Turkey, where all women of good class were so jealously guarded, to have forcibly deflowered a Princess must merit the most ghastly tortures that the Eastern mind was capable of conceiving.
' Had I but known-' he began.
' That which is done is done,' she said sharply, ' and had I been but a merchant's daughter I would have felt no less the disgrace you inflicted on me.' Then she gave an order in Turkish to her Chief Eunuch, the meaning of which Roger did not grasp.
The eunuch clapped his plump hands and two more eunuchs, who had evidently been waiting in an adjoining chamber, came waddling in. One of them carried a large bowl filled with water, the other brought soap and towels and, under one arm, two long bamboo poles. The eunuchs on either side of Roger continued to hold him down on his knees while the basin was set in front of him. The blood from his nose was running down over his lips and dripping from his chin, so he thought he was about to be allowed to wash it from his face. He was swiftly disillusioned.
One of the newcomers splashed water on his head while the other rubbed soap on it, until his hair was in a thick lather. The Chief Eunuch then produced a razor. Suddenly realizing that they intended to shave his head, he began to shout and struggle. In spite of their rolls of surplus fat, the men who held him were very strong; so in his weakened state he could not have got away from them, and he did not try for long. The Chief Eunuch gave the top of his right ear a sharp nick with the razor. Fearing that if he resisted further his ear might be cut off, Roger let himself go limp and submitted to having his head shaved.
It was over twenty hours since he had had anything to drink, but the craving he had felt during the early part of the day had later receded to the back of his mind under the compulsion of far stronger emotions. Now the sight of the bowl of water caused his thirst to return with such force that he even licked in with his parched tongue some of the soapy water that ran down from his head to the corners of his mouth. Unpleasant as it tasted, as soon as the last locks of his hair had been thrown aside he wrenched himself forward, plunged his face into the basin and lapped up several gulps of the water remaining in it.
When the eunuchs had dried Roger's head with a towel and stood back from him, Zanthe surveyed their handiwork with a smile, her two women burst out laughing and the negress gave vent to a strange cackling sound. At a word from Zanthe the old woman brought a mirror and held it up in front of Roger, so that he could see himself. The sight of his head, as bald as an egg, came as a horrid shock and his bronzed face surmounted by the pinkish scalp from which the hair had been shorn gave him the appearance of a clown. As he was inclined to be vain of his normal good looks he could have wept with anger. But far worse was to follow.
Pushing him over on his back, two of the eunuchs held him down while two others pulled off his boots and stockings. They then lashed his bare feet securely to the bamboo poles and lifted them waist-high, so that his body, shoulders, arms and legs still lay sprawled upon the ground. When the poles had been brought in, he had wondered to what use they were to be put. Now a memory flashed into his mind of someone once telling him of the Turkish torture known as the bastinado. It consisted of whipping the sensitive soles of the feet with a thin, springy rod.
Next moment he was experiencing that form of torture. The Chief Eunuch produced a rod and he brought it sharply down in Roger's upturned left* foot. He let out a yell. The rod swished down on his right foot. He yelled again and began to beg for mercy, but his pleas were ignored. Swish, swish, swish, the cuts came down with ruthless regularity, while he squirmed and twisted, shouting, screaming and vainly beating his hands on the floor. By the time Zanthe called a halt to his flagellation, the soles of his feet were raw, bleeding and giving him as much pain as though they had been held in front of a red-hot fire.
When the cords that tied his ankles to the poles had been untied, he was near fainting and lay, a sobbing wreck of a man, before the divan on which sat the beautiful girl whom he had robbed of her virginity. But she had not done with him yet. At an abrupt word from her the eunuchs began to strip him.
Pulling off the crumpled and dirty travelling coat that he had worn since soon after his arrival in Naples, and throwing it aside, they quickly divested him of his other garments. In his present state he was indifferent to the shame of being exposed naked, but when his money-belt was taken from him he rallied himself sufficiently to call out to Zanthe, ' In that you'll find a blue diamond that I procured as a gift for you while away in Alexandria.'
The belt was handed to her and after going through several of its pockets she fished out the slender chain from which depended the jewel that Sarodopulous had given him. His fleeting thought that the gift might serve to appease her was swiftly dashed. After a casual glance at it she threw it down on the divan beside her and said contemptuously:
'1 have a score of stones, each worth not less than fifty times the value of this little bauble. But it will serve as a gift for one of my tire-women who is about to marry.' Then she looked at the Chief Eunuch and added, ' Go to it now. Let us get finished with this business.'
Again water, soap and towels were brought. Roger was thrown on his back and one of the eunuchs sat on his chest so that he could not see what was being done to him; but he felt his private parts being lathered, then shaved, and he dared not move from fear of receiving a severe cut.
The weight of the eunuch on his chest drove the breath from his lungs, the soles of his bleeding feet felt as though they were being held before a fire, his injured wrist was aching dully. Yet his mind was suffering greater torture than his body as he visualized the awful thing that was about to happen to him.
He felt the rough towel against his flesh again, then a loop of string was put over his testicles and drawn tight. His eyes starting from his head he yelled to Zanthe to have mercy on him.
Her cold and imperative voice cut through his shouts. ' Enough! Be silent! This is only preparation. It will be a week yet before we make a neuter of you.'
The eunuch got up off him and two others hauled him to his feet. They pained him so much that he could not stand on them. Between them the eunuchs got his shirt over his head and threw his travelling coat round his shoulders, then half-dragged and half
-carried him out through a side door, up two flights of stairs and into a sparsely furnished attic. It had a narrow, open, arrow-slit window and he was just sufficiently conscious to realize that night had fallen. The eunuchs threw him on a narrow divan and left him, locking the door behind them.
For a time he lay where they had thrown him, drenched in sweat and half comatose, his head throbbing as though about to burst. Gradually his greater torments took first place in his consciousness. His feet caused him such pain that had he had a hatchet he would have been tempted to hack them off; his testicles, too, throbbed violently. With an effort, he sat up and endeavoured to untie the string which bit into the flesh at their base; but it was thin and waxed, so he found it impossible to unpick the knot.
Knowing little about castration, he had always supposed that the operation was performed with a knife; but he now thought that that could only be in the case of young boys, such as those the Pope annually ordered to be castrated so that they could continue to sing in the choir of the Vatican. From what Zanthd had said it seemed probable that the Turkish method with fully grown men was to restrict the flow of blood, tightening the string a little each day until the testicles became partially atrophied, and then could be cut off without the risk that the victim would die from loss of blood.
For what seemed an age he lay there, slowly turning his tortured body from side to side and groaning as the tears seeped out of the corners of his eyes. Then the door opened. Raising his head a little he recognized the old negress. In one hand she held an oil-lamp and in the other a large basket. Setting them down, she pulled open his coat and had a good look at him. Producing a small pair of clippers* she cut the string confining his testicles, bringing him swift relief in that quarter. From her basket she then took a pot of salve, with which she anointed the soles of his feet and his lacerated wrist. Having bandaged them, she went to her basket again, took from it a bowl of warm, highly spiced soup and lifted his head while he gratefully drank it down. As she let his head fall back he muttered his thanks but she made no reply and, having collected her basket, left the room.
With his pains considerably lessened, he lay still for some moments and soon became drowsy. The sensation told him that the soup must have contained opium or some other Eastern drug and before he could consider the matter further he fell asleep.
When he woke it was past midday. He felt terribly stiff and his feet still pained him badly; but on a small chest beneath the window he saw that food and drink had been left for him, and he now felt hungry. He swung his legs off the divan and gingerly tried his weight on them. He could not have walked any distance but, advancing on tiptoe, he reached the chest and sat down on a stool within reach of it.
The food consisted of some pieces of cold meat on a skewer, a dish of sweet cakes and fruit. A jug contained a mixture of orange and lemon juice that went down like nectar. As he ate he peered out of the arrow-slit window. Only a small section of the bay was visible through it and the wall it pierced was as thick as his arm was long; so he had to give up any idea of trying to attract the attention of one of the ships in the bay. When he had finished his meal he made his way unsteadily back to the divan and lay down, to be racked again by unnerving thoughts.
From the treatment he was now receiving he could only suppose that Zanthe, with a typically Eastern refinement of cruelty, was fattening him for the kill or at least enabling him to recruit his strength so that he might the better support further torment. If, too, his new theory about methods of castration was right, the string had been removed from his testicles only temporarily. It now seemed probable that to apply it only for a few hours each day would, in due course, have sufficient effect to make the final operation possible without danger. Grimly, he forced himself to accept that he must soon expect a visit from the eunuchs; but the afternoon wore on into evening, and they did not come.
As twilight deepened he fell into a doze, but started wide awake filled with apprehension when, an hour or two later, he heard footsteps outside the door. To his relief it proved to be the old negress. In her basket she had brought him up another meal. Setting it on the chest, she examined his feet and wrist, put more of the healing ointment on them and rebandaged them. Noticing that the chamber-pot which stood in a corner had not been emptied, she picked it up and deftly pitched its contents out through the arrow-slit window.
This time he was able to thank her more coherently for her ministrations, but she again remained silent. When he asked her name she grinned at him, opened her mouth wide and held up the lamp so that he could see into it. To his horror she had no tongue. It had evidently been torn out at the roots, to make her a mute and ensure that she did not disclose any secrets she might learn while in the seraglio.
Roger spent a better night and the day that followed differed from its predecessor only in that he was awake when the negress brought him his morning meal. With it she brought a basin of water for him to wash. From then on for a fortnight his days and nights kept the same pattern. His many bruises disappeared, the soles of his feet healed and his wrenched wrist returned to normal. He had nothing to read and no means whatever of employing himself; so he could spend his waking hours only in an endless series of speculations.
Having considered the possibilities of an attempt to escape, he had soon concluded that it would prove hopeless. The window was so narrow that he doubted if he would have been able to force his body through it and, even if he could, he could not have made from the material available in the room a rope anywhere near long enough to reach the ground. As his money-belt had been taken from him he could not bribe the old negress to help him, even if she had proved bribable. After the way in which she had tended him he could have brought himself to stun her only if his life had depended on it and, even if he had ruthlessly overcome her, his chances of escaping from the citadel and out of the city would have been infinitesimal.
His only means of judging the progress of the siege were from the sounds that reached him. On the fourth day of his confinement he heard gunfire and as it did not, as far as he could tell, come from the ships in the bay, he judged that Bonaparte had begun to bombard the city with such light field artillery as he had been able to bring overland with him. Next day he caught a rumbling sound, as though a small earthquake were taking place. It lasted for two or three minutes, and he guessed that one of the great towers must have collapsed. That would have meant a breach in the walls, enabling the French infantry to launch an assault. The thought raised his spirits considerably for, much as he would have wished the Anglo-Turkish force to succeed in holding Acre, his life or, hardly less precious, his virility was at stake and his only hope of saving one or the other lay in the French capturing the city and rescuing him.
During the week that followed it was obvious that they were doing their utmost to capture Acre, for Sir Sidney's Squadron and, close inshore, the gunboats he had captured were almost constantly in action. Then, towards the end of the month, the firing died down, from which Roger judged that the assaults had all been repelled by Phelippeaux's cannon on the walls and the enfilading fire from the ships. So Bonaparte had failed in his attempt to take the city by storm and had been reduced to approaching the walls by a system of trenches, from which mines could be laid beneath the fortifications.
Such an operation would take weeks, so Roger's hopes for himself sank again. By then he had recovered physically, but at times was harassed by black periods of depression and fear. He could only suppose that, as no further steps had been taken towards his castration, Zanthe was playing a cat-and-mouse game. He dare not hope that she had either forgotten or pardoned him and, if his reprieve could be explained by her having fallen ill, that could only mean a postponement of his martyrdom.
It was on April 3rd, about midnight, that he was roused from a deep sleep. He had not heard the door being unlocked and opened his eyes to find a figure bending over him. The starlight coming through the arrow-slit was just sufficient for him to make out that his visitor was clad i
n flowing robes, but he could not tell if they were worn by a man or a woman. His heart began to hammer wildly, for his first waking thought was that Zanthe had sent one of her people either to murder him or fetch him to be further tortured in front of her.
Suddenly the figure flung a pair of arms across his chest and fell in a kneeling posture beside his divan. There came a loud sob, then a heart-rending cry.
' Oh, monsieur! Can you ever forgive me for what I have done to you? *
' Zanthe! ' he exclaimed and, struggling up, instinctively put his arms about her bowed shoulders.
' There was no other way,' she sobbed, ' no other way. Having saved you from Djezzar, what else could I do? Had I not had you treated as I did, the eunuchs would have betrayed me and you would have been taken away to your death. I could justify keeping you here only because I said that you had insulted me and I wished to be revenged on you. Oh, my poor love! How you must have suffered! And I, forced to order all that was done to you, then be a witness to it.'
For a moment this extraordinary revelation, that she had saved him from impalement not out of hate but out of love, left Roger tongue-tied. That she had then been compelled to carry through the role she had adopted needed no further explaining. Finding his voice, he murmured:
' Think no more of it. Cease your tears, I beg. I owe my life to you and you love me. That is all that matters.' Then with one hand he started to stroke her hair and added, ' But . . . but when did you find that you loved me? '
Her sobs ceased and she began to speak in a breathless voice. ' Love begets love. That first night, I could not help but be drawn to you. Your looks, those fine shoulders and slim hips. They would attract any woman with warm blood in her veins. That . . . that was why, in the end, I gave myself so fully. How could I not? But that is not love. I counted you no better than any other soldier who had not lain with a woman for months, and would have taken any little slave-girl just as fiercely. And you, an uncircumcised Christian, had robbed me, a Princess of the Imperial Line, of my virginity! I saw it as my people would —a crime unthinkable. My passion spent, I hated you for it and determined to escape. As you must know, while you were away in Alexandria the merchant ben-Jussif, who owned the house, and his sons rescued me. I sought asylum with the Viceroy's ladies. Then, during the October rebellion, you broke into the seraglio. By then I thought you would at least have found out that I was the widow of the Commander of the Cairo garrison and a woman of high rank. But you claimed me as your slave. Can you wonder at my resentment? '
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