by Harold Lamb
Charnomar went down to investigate. He did not answer at once because his Turkish was made up of the speech of the Barbary galleys and the Kuban Cossacks.
"Thy boat," he muttered, "is heavy, and its smell is of fish."
"But the price—the price is small. Six dirhems. And in a very little while Allah will cause the dark to come."
Charnomar seated himself clumsily—when did a Circassian know anything about boats?—in the bow of the skiff. But he felt that he should have haggled over the price, because the waterman kept glancing over his shoulder, and when they were within pistol shot of the lights of the Stamboul docks he rested his oars and began to question his passenger.
"Eh, chelabim, are you looking for a coffee inn, or perhaps a fine bayadere—a singing girl?"
"Perhaps."
"Then go around the market up the hill. Under the arch is the Kislar Dar,2 where the janissaries spend their time. The music there is fine, and the girls come from the Greek islands and Smyrna and all the foreign places. I will show you."
The boatman took up his oars again, palpably eager for a new commission, and Charnomar reflected that it would be well to land with a companion. Already torches were passing along the stone embankment, and the lights gleamed on the shields of armed guards.
When he climbed up the narrow steps, slippery with damp, into the glare of torchlight and the din of many voices, Charnomar's heartbeat quickened and a slight shiver twitched his shoulders. The shiver was pure excitement, because he stood upon the stones of Stamboul, the citadel of Is-lam—Stamboul, mistress of the three seas and the mainland of Europe, the gate of Asia, more beautiful than Rome.
More than once he had seen its marble walls, the dark green of its fruit gardens, the domes and slender minarets that had been built upon ancient Christian palaces. That was when he had been chained to the oar of a Barbary galley. For a Christian to enter Stamboul, except on sufferance, afoot and unarmed, was forbidden; for a Christian to wear a weapon, even a knife, was to gamble with death. A Cossack discovered within the city would be hunted down like a wolf found among sheep.
Even the ambassadors of the great kings of France and Holland had their houses across the bay in Pera and came to the city only to petition the sultan or to make gifts, nor could they protect their own followers if the soldiery of Islam desired captives.
So Charnomar breathed deeply, although his dark face was only insolent and expectant when his guide, eager to curry favor with the openhanded swordsman from the hills, cried out loudly:
"'Way for the lord of the hills! Make way, O ye who believe!"
If the high pitched shout drew the attention of a dozen guards and a hundred loiterers, it also served as introduction, and Charnomar shifted the rug on his shoulder, brushed at his yellow mustache and swaggered onward, taking pains to get out of nobody's way. Instead of striking through the marketplace, where his patron might have been tempted to linger and buy or brawl, the waterman turned aside among uptilted carts and led the Cossack through odorous shadows, past an empty tank, to a flight of wooden steps, narrow and steep and treacherous with mud.
They climbed to where an oil lamp on a courtyard wall revealed the dark mass of an arch overhead. Putting out his hands to steady himself, Charnomar could feel the plaster walls on either side. And as he did so, two tall figures appeared beneath the arch, descending the steps. By their sable-lined kaftans, their pearl-sewn turbans and the slender gilded staffs they carried Charnomar recognized the two as janissaries—soldiers of the sultan's guard, slave bred and trained to weapons. More over, they were officers, insolently aware of the fear they inspired.
The waterman shrank back against a wall, trying to salaam and efface himself at the same time. The janissaries brushed past him and looked at Charnomar as hunting dogs eye a wolf. Charnomar guessed that he was expected to retreat before them, but he knew that a Circassian would not give up the path without cause.
"Beggar of the hills!" said one officer pleasantly, when he made no move to yield the steps.
The other had a more pointed tongue.
"O son of nameless fathers," he murmured, "surely thou art coming to visit thy sister within the arch, thy sister, the mother of nameless sons."
They waited to see if this would draw fire from the Circassian.
"Thou wilt know thy sister," the first speaker added, amused. "She wears no veil, yonder."
This was adding injury to insult, and Charnomar answered. He had not spent months on a rower's bench of a Barbary galley without learning the sulphurous language of the slave masters. Moreover, under his calm, he was chilled by a cold hatred of all Turks. So he answered with three words and the waterman yelled in fear and scrambled up the steps.
The janissaries stared until rage overcame their astonishment and the nearest one swung his staff at Charnomar's head. The staff had an iron knob on one end, a steel point on the other.
The blow was hasty, and the Cossack reached up a long arm, grasping the staff under the knob. He pulled down, and toward him, and the janissary was jerked from his footing, scrambled vainly to get his balance on the worn and slippery steps, and ended by plunging past Charnomar fifty feet to the bottom. But the Cossack kept the staff.
With it he parried a savage blow by the janissary's companion. The staffs were rather longer than cudgels, but Charnomar could move his big bulk with surprising swiftness. He had the better position, too, on that treacherous incline, because the man above him could not strike down freely and had to guard his feet.
When the janissary tried to reach for his sword, Charnomar whacked him solidly in the ribs with the iron knob. The soldier kicked out at the Cossack's head, and his ankle was caught by a hand that wrenched him off balance in a second. Clattering and cursing, he went down into darkness.
At once the two lifted the shrill rallying cry of Islam—
"Ha Muslimin!"
Charnomar ran up the steps beneath the arch. The waterman had vanished. He found himself in a narrow alley full of subdued sound and movement. He smelled musk and charcoal and cooking, saw the faint gleam of iron lanterns carried by some of the figures in the alley.
Aware of an opening on his right hand, he turned sharply and ducked his head under a low arch. In the gloom beyond he stumbled against animals, laden donkeys by the feel of them. He freed himself and ran on, past the glow of a fire where hooded figures sat about a water pipe. Dimly he saw steps in front of him, and kept on.
The steps led to an open roof where he could make out the line of the parapet against the stars. Voices clamored behind him, and he swung himself over the parapet, hanging by his hands until he felt shrubbery brushing against his feet. Then he released his hold, expecting to drop into soft earth.
But the shrubbery proved to be trees, and Charnomar flung out his arms, falling through the swaying branches of cypresses, a dozen feet or more to the ground. He picked himself up and felt to make certain that his sword was in its sheath. He had thrown away the staff in the beginning.
Above him he heard the slip-slap of bare feet, and low voices disputing. In the darkness under the cypresses he could not be seen, and evidently the men above did not think he had gone over a twenty-foot wall. They went elsewhere and Charnomar groped around until he had found his rug.
With this again on his shoulder he moved out from the wall and found himself under clear starlight in a kind of open alley. Dogs snarled at him tentatively, and he investigated farther, bringing up against blank walls until he noticed the arch of a doorway and found it to be open.
He entered at once, because to hesitate would be to show himself a stranger or afraid. A lantern hung from a bracket above the glimmer of water in a stone-bordered tank. Around the tank were masses of tulips and aloes in bloom, and he thought that this must be the garden court of some mosque or tomb—almost certainly a tomb, because it was utterly silent.
He shut the door behind him and went to sit on a bench, not too near the light. Throwing off his rug, he stretched out his
legs and sat thinking with one eye on the courtyard door. He was hungry, but the evening was young, and the janissaries had been too angered for him to venture out just yet. Presently they would give up the search and he would go and find a coffee shop.
"O thou man of the hills, what evil hast thou done?"
It was a soft voice, seemingly amused, a woman's voice within a few feet of him. He looked instinctively toward the light, then away. She was sitting a little back from the tank on a strip of carpet under the aloes. After a moment he was certain that no others were with her.
"What is it to thee, O daughter of idleness?" he made response gruffly, for it was audacious in her to speak to him at all.
"Look!"
When he would not do as she said, the woman came and sat on the stone edge of the tank, so near that he could have touched her. Perforce he glanced down. She was a Circassian. He had seen girls like her in the valleys under the Caucasus—girls who wore that same jaunty striped cap with the limp feathers hanging down the mass of her straw-yellow hair. Her fringed shawl, which covered shoulders too slender and vigorous for a Turkish woman, was of soft lamb's wool. And her green leather halfboots were gilded after the manner of the mountain women.
"Peace be upon thee," he said indifferently.
"And upon thee the peace of God, the one God, O my brother!"
There was a hint of meaning in the last word, and Charnomar frowned down upon her, pulling at the end of his mustache. The last thing he wished was to meet with any one from the Circassian hills, and he chose to look annoyed as a warrior should.
"Thy brother was a magpie!" he scoffed, and rose, stretching his long arms, as if too annoyed to sit there longer.
"Wait!"
The Circassian also had gray eyes, though much darker than his by reason of kohl rubbed on the lids. She smelled evasively of aloes and musk, and seemed more than ready to mock him. Because she went unveiled he knew that she must be from the Kislar Dar.
"Ai-a, it is two years since I was brought across the sea, and in all that time I have had no speech with one from the hills. What is thy village?"
Charnomar seemed to listen idly.
"Ask the eagles! The eagle is wiser than the magpie."
"Oh, thou art a true jigit.3 Was it thou who raised the cry and the brawling just now?"
Charnomar smiled. "Ask the Turks!"
When he smiled, the harshness left his eyes, and the lines about his wide mouth softened. The girl watched him intently and when he would have moved away, she touched his sleeve.
"Wait! Tell me truly what place thou art from."
Silver bracelets set with amethysts slid upon her arm when she moved. She was a bayadere, a girl trained to singing and dancing, brought hither for the amusement of the Turks, and the Cossack reflected that she would doubtless be rewarded if she could point out an armed Christian within the city. That she suspected him was perfectly clear.
"From the sea!" he laughed, meeting her eyes frankly.
"It did not teach thee wisdom. For thou wert sitting with legs stretched out like an unbeliever, and thy talk is like—" She shook her head helplessly. "Thou art no man of the hills."
"What, then?"
For the moment they were alone in the courtyard, and he might have drawn his sword and slain her before she could cry out. The body of a bayadere found in a garden tank would have aroused no curiosity in the city. But Charnomar never killed a woman, and he did not think of doing so now.
"It is strange," she whispered. "That kaftan and vest—"
She turned her head suddenly. Voices approached the garden, and the door was pushed open. Charnomar saw three Moslems enter, leisurely, as if by right.
The one in advance was an old man in white robes and turban, and the two who attended him were obviously disciples. An imam, an expounder of the law of Islam, and by the same token, an enemy of all infidels.
Before the bayadere could speak, Charnomar stepped forward and salaamed.
"O master of wisdom, tell thy servant if this night is the first of the moon of Shawwul?"
The imam answered in measured tones.
"Nay, the second night from this, Shawwul begins."
Something like suspicion touched his thin face, and the two youths stared openly. Charnomar breathed deeply, his ears alert for the first cry of betrayal that might come from the girl. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her rising from the prostration of the dancing girl.
She said nothing at all, and after one glance at her unveiled face, the expounder of the law went on his way toward the tomb. But his disciples looked back over their shoulders, for the Circassian was well worth looking at twice.
"Come," she whispered the moment they were out of sight. "It is not safe for thee here. Nay, walk more slowly, a little before me."
"Whither?" the Cossack asked.
"To my place. Oh, thou art a fool! I prayed, here, outside this tomb, for a man of my people, a man of the hills. When I saw thee wearing the kaftan and vest I thought that God had sent such a man. But thou art a fool!"
The Circassian lived at the top of a ramshackle wooden building, up flights of dark stairs that were far from quiet. Somewhere a tambourine jingled monotonously, and a woman sang, and the air was full of the reek of hubble-bubbles.
"If thou art afraid," he heard the Circassian whisper, "the way is open to go."
Charnomar did not answer. He had come with her because there were too many lights and too many janissaries who might be looking for a Circassian swordsman on the prowl for the streets to be safe as yet.
The singing girl drew back a curtain—he could feel the stirring of air as it fell behind her—and after a moment reappeared with a lamp, holding back the curtain for him to enter.
Her room was carpeted and furnished with no more than a charcoal brazier, a tabouret or two with a coffee stand, and a chest. But the settee that ran along the wall was cleanly covered and cushioned, and the air was fresh because the room opened out into a kind of gallery, screened by wooden fretwork. Charnomar kicked off his slippers and went and sat on the divan, and the Circassian laughed softly because this time he sat upon his heels.
"Tell me truly what thou art!" she demanded.
"First," he responded, "tell me why thou did not betray me to the imam."
For a moment she looked angry; then it pleased her to mock him again. "Because thou art a brave—fool."
"Perhaps," he nodded, "because I am a Circassian from the sea—aye, wearing the garments of the dead."
To his astonishment the singing girl shrank back away from him until her shoulders touched the wall. Her eyes widened and seemed to grow swiftly darker as her cheeks became bloodless.
"Why?" she whispered. "In the name of the Compassionate—why?"
"To seek vengeance." Charnomar spoke at a venture, unwilling to mention ransom to this girl of the Kislar Dar.
She swayed and brushed back the yellow mass of hair from her forehead. Her eyes were fastened upon him as if she would read the soul within him, the spirit within the lean dark face and the steel-gray eyes. But surely a matter of vengeance could not startle a girl from the hills of the wild clans, who wore thrust in her girdle a curved dagger.
"Indeed, I prayed," she said slowly, "but—how could it happen?"
Charnomar was well content to be silent, until she mastered herself and went into the gallery, presently returning with a small roll of sweetmeat in her hands, fragrant of spice and aloe wood. This was the ma’jun, or guest refreshment, and Charnomar took it the more readily because he knew that she meant to offer him food, and the sharing of salt would be a tie between them. Moreover, he was hungry.
"I am Ilga of the Terek people," she said, "and my house is yours."
Deftly she prepared food in a brass pot over the brazier, mutton stew seasoned with garlic and rice with saffron. She moved gracefully, and always swiftly, and in silence. She who had mocked and scolded him was now content to treat him as a guest. More than once he found her look
ing at him with that strange curiosity. Charnomar was listening to the uproar in the street; for the Turkish soldiers, judging by the sounds, were pillaging the houses, under pretext of searching. More than once he heard a woman wailing, and the clinking of anklets as some girl fled past the curtain.
"What can we do?" the Circassian, Ilga, said calmly. "There are guards in the Kislar Dar—aye, they are the first to enter when the door of looting is open."
She placed food on the tabouret beside him and knelt by the divan to eat.
Charnomar was gathering up the last wad of rice when the curtain was thrust aside and a warrior in mail strode in. He had a shield on one arm and in the fingers of that hand a sack that jingled suggestively when he moved.
"Ahai, little pigeon under the roof!"
The Turk, a sipahi fully armed, blinked in the dull lamplight and made for the gleam of Ilga's tawny head. He must have emptied more than one cup of wine, because he reached for her shoulder and laughed when he
clasped only air. Ilga had drawn away from him and slipped to the divan behind the Cossack.
"Little pigeon flies!"
The sipahi peered about him, holding out his bag, which must have contained many rings and anklets taken from more timid girls. Suddenly he cursed harshly, because he had noticed the Cossack in the depths of the divan.
"Out with thee—dog of the hills!"
Evidently he did not think that Charnomar would dare refuse his bidding. Judging by the shield, the sipahi was one of the guards of the quarter.
The Cossack got to his feet and confronted the pillager, his hands thrust into his belt.
"Nay," he said, "I will stay and thou wilt go—now."
The sipahi fumbled for the hilt of his sword, but his fingers struck the sack and he began to mutter. He was not in any mood to take up weapons and presently when the Cossack did not move or speak, he backed to the door and went out, kicking savagely at Charnomar's slippers.
Ilga ran to the balcony and gazed down at the shifting torches and hurrying figures of the alley until she saw the sipahi make his way into the next house. Then she motioned to Charnomar to sit near her.