by Noah Gordon
When Alā ordered the Shah’s Game a board was brought at once and the pieces set up. This time Rob remembered the different moves but the Shah had an easy time defeating him thrice in succession, despite having called for more wine and quickly dispatching it.
“Qandrasseh would enforce the edict against wine drinking,” Alā said.
Rob didn’t know a safe reply.
“Let me tell you of Qandrasseh, Dhimmi. Qandrasseh understands—wrongly, wrongly!—that the throne exists principally to punish those who overstep the Qu’ran. The throne exists to enlarge the nation and make it all-powerful, not to worry about the mean sins of villagers. But the Imam believes he is Allah’s terrible right hand. It is not enough that he has risen from being the head of a tiny mosque in Media until he is Vizier to the Shah of Persia. He is distant kin to the Abbasid family, in his veins flows the blood of the Caliphs of Baghdad. He would like one day to rule in Ispahan, striking out from my throne with a religious fist.”
Now Rob could not have answered had the words been there, for he was stricken with terror. The Shah’s wine-loosened tongue had put him at highest risk, for if Ala, sobering, should regret his words it would be no great task to arrange the witness’s swift disposal.
But Alā showed no discomfiture. When a sealed jug of wine was brought, he tossed it to Rob and led him back to the horses. They made no attempt to hunt but simply rode through the lazy day and grew hot and nicely tired. The hills were bright with flowers, cuplike blossoms of red and yellow and white, on thick stalks. They weren’t plants he had seen in England. Alā couldn’t tell him their names but said each came not from a seed but from a bulb like an onion.
“I am taking you to a place you must never show to any man,” Alā said, and led him through brush until they were at the ferny mouth of a cave. Just inside, amid a stench like slightly rotting eggs, was warm air and a pool of brown water lined with gray rocks blotched with purple lichens. Already Alā was undressing. “Well, do not tarry. Off with your clothes, you foolish Dhimmi!”
Rob did so with nervous reluctance, wondering whether the Shah was a man who loved the bodies of men. But Alā already was in the water and assessing him unabashedly but without lust.
“Bring the wine. You are not exceptionally hung, European.”
He realized it would not be politic to point out that his organ was larger than the king’s.
The Shah was more sensitive than Rob had credited, for Alā was grinning at him. “I don’t need to be made like a horse, for I can have any woman. I never do a woman twice, do you know that? That is why a host does not hold more than one entertainment for me, unless he gets a new wife.”
Rob settled gingerly into hot water odorous with mineral deposits, and Alā opened the wine jug and drank, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Sweat sprang from his cheeks and forehead until the part out of the water was as wet as the portion of his body that was submerged. Rob studied him, wondering what it was like to be supreme.
“When did you lose your maidenhead?” Alā asked, eyes still closed.
Rob told him of the English widow who had taken him into her bed.
“I, too, was twelve years old. My father ordered his sister to begin to come to my bed, as is our custom with young princes, very sensible. My aunt was tender and instructive, almost a mother to me. For years I thought that after every fucking came a bowl of warm milk and a sweetmeat.”
They soaked in contented silence. “I would be King of Kings, European,” Alā said finally.
“You are King of Kings.”
“That is what I am called.”
Now he opened his eyes and looked directly at Rob, an unblinking brown stare. “Xerxes. Alexander. Cyrus. Darius. All great, and if each was not Persian by birth, they were Persian kings when they died. Great kings over great empires.
“Now there is no empire. In Ispahan, I am the king. To the west, Toghrul-beg rules over vast tribes of nomadic Seljuk Turks. To the east, Mahmud is the sultan of the mountainous fasts of Ghazna. Beyond Ghazna, two dozen weak rajahs rule in India but they are a threat only to one another. The only kings strong enough to matter are Mahmud, Toghrul beg, and I. When I ride forth, the chawns and beglerbegs who rule the towns and cities rush outside their walls to meet me with tribute and fawning compliments.
“But I know the same chawns and beglerbegs would pay the same homage to either Mahmud or Toghrul-beg if they should ride that way with their armies.
“Once in ancient days there was a time like now, when there were small kingdoms and kings who fought for the prize of a vast empire. Finally only two men held all the power. Ardashir and Ardewan met in single combat while their armies watched. Two great, mailed figures circling each other in the desert. It ended when Ardewan was bludgeoned to death and Ardashir was the first man to take the title Shahanshah. Would you not like to be that kind of King of Kings?”
Rob shook his head. “I want only to be a physician.”
He could see puzzlement on the Shah’s face. “Something new. All my life no one has failed to take an opportunity to flatter me. Yet you would not exchange places with the king, it is clear.
“I have made inquiries. They say that as an apprentice you are remarkable. That great things are expected when you become hakim. I shall need men who can do great things but do not lick my arse.
“I will use guile and the power of the throne to stave off Qandrasseh. The Shah has always had to fight to keep Persia. I will use my armies and my sword against other kings. Before I am through, Persia will be an empire again and I shall truly be Shahanshah.”
His hand clamped Rob’s wrist. “Will you be my friend, Jesse ben Benjamin?”
Rob knew he had been lured and trapped by a clever hunter. Alā Shah was recruiting his future loyalty for his own purposes. And it was being done coldly and with forethought; clearly, there was more to this monarch than the drunken profligate.
He would not have chosen to be involved in politics and he regretted riding out into the country that morning. But it was done, and Rob was very aware of his debts.
He took the Shah’s wrist. “You have my allegiance, Majesty.”
Alā nodded. He leaned back again, into the heat of the pool, and scratched his chest. “So. And do you like this, my special place?”
“It is sulfurous as a fart. Sire.”
Alā was not a man to guffaw. He merely opened his eyes and smiled. Eventually he spoke again. “You may bring a woman here if you like, Dhimmi,” he said lazily.
* * *
“I don’t like it,” Mirdin said when he heard that Rob had ridden with Alā. “He is unpredictable and dangerous.”
“It’s a great opportunity for you,” Karim said.
“An opportunity I don’t desire.”
To his relief, days went by and the Shah didn’t summon him again. He felt the need for friends who were not kings and spent much of his free time with Mirdin and Karim.
Karim was settling into the life of a young physician, working at the maristan as he had before, save that now he was paid a small stipend by al-Juzjani for daily examination and care of the surgeon’s patients. With more time to himself and a bit more money to spend, he was frequenting the maidans and the brothels. “Come with me,” he urged Rob. “I’ll bring you to a whore with hair black as a raven’s wing and fine as silk.”
Rob smiled and shook his head.
“What kind of woman do you want?”
“One with hair red as fire.”
Karim grinned at him. “They don’t come that way.”
“You need wives,” Mirdin told them placidly, but neither of them heeded him. Rob turned his energies to his studies. Karim continued his solitary womanizing, and his sexual appetite was becoming a source of merriment to the hospital staff. Knowing his story, Rob was aware that within the beautiful face and the athlete’s body was a friendless little boy seeking female love to blot out terrible memories.
Karim ran more than ever now, at the start and end o
f each day. He trained hard and constantly and not only by running. He taught Rob and Mirdin to use the curved sword of Persia, the scimitar, a heavier weapon than Rob was used to and one requiring strong, supple wrists. Karim made them exercise with a heavy rock in each hand, turning the rocks up and down, before and behind, to make their wrists quick and strong.
Mirdin was not a good athlete and couldn’t become a swordsman. But he accepted his clumsiness cheerfully, and he was so endowed with intellectual power it scarcely seemed to matter that he wasn’t fierce with a sword.
They saw little of Karim after dark—abruptly, he stopped asking Rob to accompany him to brothels, confiding that he had begun an affair with a married woman and was in love. But with increasing frequency Rob was invited to Mirdin’s rooms near the House of Zion Synagogue for the evening meal.
On a chest in Mirdin’s home he was amazed to see a checkered board such as he had seen only twice before. “Is it the Shah’s Game?”
“Yes. You know it? My family has played it forever.”
Mirdin’s pieces were wooden, but the game was identical to that Rob had played with Alā, save that instead of being intent on swift and bloody victory, Mirdin was quick to teach. Before long, under his patient tutelage, Rob began to grasp the fine points.
Homely Mirdin offered him small glimpses of peace. On a warm evening, after a simple meal of Fara’s vegetable pilah, he followed Mirdin to wish six-year-old Issachar a good night.
“Abba. Is our Father in Heaven watching me?”
“Yes, Issachar. He sees you always.”
“Why cannot I see Him?”
“He is invisible.”
The boy had fat brown cheeks and serious eyes. His teeth and jaw already were too large and he would have his father’s inelegance, but also his sweetness.
“If He is invisible, how does He know what He looks like?”
Rob grinned. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, he thought. Answer that, O Mirdin, scholar of oral and written law, master of the Shah’s Game, philosopher and healer …
But Mirdin was equal to it. “The Torah tells us He has made man in His own image, after His likeness, and therefore He does but glance at you, my son, and sees Himself.” Mirdin kissed the child. “A good night, Issachar.”
“A good night, Abba. A good night, Jesse.”
“Rest well, Issachar,” Rob said, and kissed the boy and followed his friend from the sleeping chamber.
49
FIVE DAYS TO THE WEST
A large caravan arrived from Anatolia and a young drover came to the maristan with a basket of dried figs for the Jew named Jesse. The youth was Sadi, eldest son of Dehbid Hafiz, kelonter of Shīrāz, and the figs were a gift symbolizing his father’s love and gratitude for the plague-fighters of Ispahan.
Sadi and Rob sat and drank chai and ate the delectable figs, which were large and meaty, full of crystals of sugar. Sadi had bought them in Midyat from a drover whose camels had carried them from Izmir, across the whole of Turkey. Now he would drive the camels east again, bound for Shīrāz, and he was caught up in the great adventure of travel and proud when the Dhimmi healer requested that he carry a gift of Ispahan wines to his distinguished father, Dehbid Hafiz.
The caravans were the only source of news, and Rob questioned the youth closely.
There had been no further sign of the plague when the caravan had departed Shīrāz. Seljuk troops had been sighted once in the mountainous eastern part of Media but they appeared to be a small party and did not attack the caravan (praise be to Allah!). In Ghazna the people were afflicted with a curious itching rash and the caravan master would not stop there lest the drovers lie with the local women and contract the strange disease. In Hamadhān there was no plague but a Christian foreigner had brought a European fever to Islam and the mullahs had forbidden the populace from all contact with the infidel devils.
“What are the signs of this disease?”
Sadi ibn Dehbid demurred, for he was no physician and didn’t bother his head with such matters. He knew only that no one save the Christian’s daughter would go near him.
“The Christian has a daughter?”
Sadi could not describe the sick man or his daughter but said that Boudi the Camel Trader, who was with the caravan, had seen them both.
Together they sought out the camel trader, a sly-eyed, wizened man who spat red saliva from between teeth blackened from chewing betel nut.
Boudi barely remembered the Christians, he said, but when Rob pressed a coin on him his memory improved until he recalled that he had seen them five days’ travel to the west, half a day beyond the town of Datur. The father was middle-aged, with long gray hair and no beard. He had worn foreign clothing black as a mullah’s robes. The woman was young and tall and had curious hair a little lighter in color than henna.
Rob looked at him in dismay. “How ill did the European appear?”
Boudi smiled pleasantly. “I do not know, master. III.”
“Were there servants?”
“I saw no one attending them.”
Doubtless the hirelings had run off, Rob told himself. “Did she appear to have sufficient food?”
“I myself gave her a basket of pulse and three loaves of bread, master.”
Now Rob fixed him with a stare that frightened Boudi. “Why did you give her foodstuffs?”
The camel trader shrugged. He turned and rummaged in a sack, and pulled out a knife, hilt first. There were fancier knives to be found in every Persian marketplace but it was the proof, for the last time Rob had seen it, this dagger had swung from the belt of James Geikie Cullen.
He knew if he confided in Karim and Mirdin they would insist on accompanying him, and he wanted to go alone. He left word for them with Yussuf-ul-Gamal. “Tell them I’m called off on a personal matter and will explain on my return,” he said to the librarian.
Of others, he told only Jalal.
“Going away for a time? But why?”
“It’s important. It involves a woman …”
“Of course it does,” Jalal muttered. The bonesetter was cranky until he found that there were enough apprentices to serve the clinic without discomforting him, and then he nodded.
Rob left next morning. It was a long trip and undue haste would have worked against him, yet he kept the brown gelding moving, for always in his mind was the picture of a woman alone in a foreign wilderness with her sick father.
It was summer weather and the runoff waters of spring already had evaporated under the coppery sun, so that the salty dust of Persia coated him and insinuated itself into his saddle pack. He ate it in his food and drank a thin film of it in his water. Everywhere he saw wildflowers turned brown, but he passed people tilling the rocky soil by turning the little moisture to irrigate the vines and date trees, as had been done for thousands of years.
He was grimly purposeful and no one challenged or delayed him, and at dusk of the fourth day he passed the town of Datur. Nothing could be done in the dark, but next morning he was riding at sunrise. At midmorning in the tiny village of Gusheh, a merchant accepted his coin, bit it, and then told him everyone knew of the Christians. They were in a house off Ahmad’s wadi, a short ride due west.
The wadi eluded him but he came upon two goatherds, an old man and a boy. At his question about the whereabouts of Christians, the old man spat.
Rob drew his weapon. He had an almost-forgotten ugliness in him. The old man could sense it and, with his eyes on the broadsword, he raised his arm and pointed.
Rob rode in that direction. When he was out of range, the younger goatherd put a stone in his sling and launched it. He could hear it rattling in the rocks behind him.
He came upon the wadi suddenly. The old riverbed was mostly dry but had been flooded earlier in the season, for in shady places there was still green growth. He followed it a good way before he saw the little house built of mud and stone. She was standing outside boiling a wash and when she saw him she sprang away like a wild thi
ng, into the house. By the time he was off his horse, she had dragged something heavy against the door.
“Mary.”
“Is it you?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence, then a grating sound as she moved the rock. The door opened a crack, and then wider.
He realized she had never seen him in the beard or the Persian garb, although the leather Jew’s hat was the one she knew.
She was holding her father’s sword. The ordeal was in her face, which was thin, making her eyes and the large cheekbones and long thin nose all the more prominent. There were blisters on her lips, which he recalled happened to her when she was exhausted. Her cheeks were sooty except for two lines washed by tears from the smoky fire. But she blinked and he could see her become as sensible as he remembered.
“Please. Will you help him?” she said, and led Rob quickly into the house.
* * *
His heart sank when he saw James Cullen. He didn’t need to take the sheepman’s hands to know he was dying. She must have known too, but she looked at him as though she expected him to heal her father with a touch.
There hung over the house the fetid stink of Cullen’s insides.
“He has had the flux?”
She nodded wearily and recited the details in a flat voice. The fever had begun weeks before with vomiting and a terrible pain in the right side of his abdomen. Mary had nursed him carefully. After a time his temperature had subsided and to her great relief he had begun to get well. For several weeks he had made steady gains and was almost recovered, and then the symptoms had recurred, this time with even greater severity.
Cullen’s face appeared pale and sunken, and his eyes dull. His pulse was barely perceptible. He was racked with alternating fever and chills, and had both diarrhea and vomiting.
“The servants thought it was the plague. They ran away,” she said.