by Harold Lamb
Not slaves exactly. They used to be that, in the days when the sultans sat behind the Sublime Porte and few wealthy Turks lacked a Circassian girl in their harems. Not wives, as we understand the term. Just the veiled women of the household, the mothers of sons, the most alluring of them being the favorites. They could not read, and they were told that after death they could not share the Paradise of their lords, the men. Still, they knew a lot and the future never seemed to worry them. What was written would come to pass.
For centuries the Circassian families in the mountains sold their girls. When a child was thirteen, fourteen or so, she would be sent off with a merchant-disappearing without trace. That happened to Sakhri, after she had tended the cows for five years and worn the veil for three. The lads of the village used to follow her about, and she would throw stones at them, being a fastidious child. She also carried a curved knife, which she could use very effectively, having been called upon to slaughter lambs frequently when the men were off at war. The night before she went with the merchant she prayed in the stone masjid by the tombs and bathed herself all over. Then she put on her silver armlets and inlaid headband, not forgetting the knife that had an ivory handle. She was sold to one Uzbek Khan, who was fifty-six and already had seven other wives-Sakhri the Circassian being the youngest and the eighth.
Uzbek Khan was a man of note, since he held Al Arak, an almost impregnable tower by the caravan road-impregnable so long as he could pay the two or three hundred unbridled tribesmen who served for a mounted army. An experienced fighter, generous to his women, who had separate rooms and slave girls of their own. With Sakhri he was patient and gentle, smiling at her jealousy of the other women. She paid little attention to the ox-eyed Greek, or to the older ones who had borne children; but she waged a war of her own against Lali, the dancing girl from Isfahan who melodiously sang mocking songs about her. Sakhri, who was not unusually clever, could not think of a retort. But one day, with her knife she cut off half of Lali's dark hair, and when Uzbek Khan was told about this he laughed.
"Eh," he said, "she is a little dove with strong wings."
He loved her passionately because she was no more than a child. Her jealousy of the others and devotion to him pleased the khan, who preferred her fierce love-making to the more languid arts of Lali, who, besides, now lacked half her hair.
And Sakhri thrived under his adoration. She had armlets-silver set with opals, cat's-eyes, turquoise, and moonstones-all the way from slender wrist to shoulder, and she used attar of rose-plundered from Lali-to scent her straw-red mass of hair instead of the musk that had satisfied her until now. She learned to chew mastic and to eat sugared ginger by the handful. When Uzbek Khan and his riders went out to raid, she stood on the arched gate and screamed encouragement after them.
On such occasions the khan always rode a white horse with unclipped mane and tail. He carried a round wooden shield studded with silver bosses, and he wore two knives beside the long yataghan thrust into his waistband. But his pride was the Enfield rifle slung behind his shoulder, the stock ornamented with gold tracery. When he left his women on such occasions for a month or so, he placed no guards over them. Neither eunuchs nor armed slaves. His wives, he believed, would cast their eyes on no other men. Once a young dancing girl had done so, and Uzbek Khan had cut away her nose and ears and had sent her, unveiled and screaming, mounted on a donkey's back, to the other man-a visiting merchant who, upon this apparition of his amorata, had made haste to flee on the first horse ready at hand, taking no thought of his camel string or of the mutilated girl. Uzbek Khan let the man go-knowing the dancing girl, he did not consider the merchant guilty-but he kept the camels in trade.
During his absence with the army, he sent news to his family from time to time. At Al Arak they had a dovecote with trained messenger pigeons. The old Tatar who watched over the khan's falcons took care of the house of the pigeons, as he called it, and put a half dozen of the swift birds into wicker cages to accompany the khan upon a journey. If the khan wished to send word to Al Arak, he would repeat it to his writer, who would copy it down upon a slip of rice paper and put the paper in a tiny silver cylinder, which in turn would be fastened to the wing or claw of the carrier pigeon. When the bird alighted at the dovecote on the roof of Al Arak, the Tatar falconer would remove the cylinder and take it to someone who could read the message-to the old hadji or the mullah. So, those in the palace could hear the message of Uzbek Khan.
It was the only post in this waste of mountains between the snowcap of Ararat -where the people say the remains of the ark of Noah are to be seen, if any human being can scale the mountain-and the salt-encrusted shore of the Caspian. Civilization, with its telegraph wire, its siege gun and cinema, has not yet penetrated this limbo of pine forests that soar upward to bare rock and the eternal snows.
Sakhri found life honey-sweet, until another woman took her place as favorite of the khan.
It was Sultan Hussayn's doing. He was lord of Irivan, and a few thousand square miles of mountains, including the tiled fort of Al Arak. Generations ago the khans of Arak had paid tribute to the sultans of Irivan-the white-walled city by the lake. But Uzbek, and his father before him, discovering that their stronghold was impregnable, had defied the sultans, who, after a fruitless attempt or two to storm Al Arak, perched like a bird's nest atop the cliff, had contented themselves with threats.
A little while before, Sultan Hussayn, a young man and a spendthrift, had sent Uzbek Khan an invitation to visit him in Irivan. The khan, aware that such a visit would end in a cell, declined politely, protesting that he was incapacitated by a wound, and sending Hussayn a swift-paced black horse and a brown peregrine falcon as gifts.
Now Hussayn returned the present-in princely fashion. Protesting that in his turn he had nothing but love in his heart for the Eagle of the Snows, he dispatched to Al Arak two camels loaded with bales of silk garments and carpets and one eunuch and one girl. This girl was Zuleika.
At the first sight of her Uzbek khan muttered under his breath praise of Allah the Compassionate. Her skin, he thought, was soft and clear as silk; her hair darker than the storm cloud; her shape slender as a young willow; the scent of her sweeter than musk, aloes, or burning ambergris. Moreover she could play melodiously on the lute and sing love songs he had never heard before. He wondered why Hussayn had been moved to such generosity until he questioned the enunch who brought her, and learned that the sultan of Irivan had fared badly in war. Hussayn, it seemed, had need of the Eagle of the Snows and his twelvescore horsemen.
But he soon ceased to wonder, in Zuleika's arms. He even neglected Sakhri. No more armlets or sugared ginger came to the flame-haired Circassian girl, who shut herself up in her room, enraged. When Uzbek Khan failed to beg her to show the moon of her countenance to the night of his misery, she wept. Then the new eunuch, Vali, came to bid her move from her quarters, in the summit of the tower.
Incredulous, she saw Zuleika installed in the room-upon the finest of carpets and embroidered silk cushions, while Vali fetched and carried for her like a porter. Sakhri complained, in a tempest of tears and beseeching, to Uzbek Khan, who stroked her head gently and listened unmoved.
"Thou hast called me," she cried recklessly, "the illumination of thy soul and the solace of thy liver. Wallahi, thou knowest no other man owned me while that lute tinkler-"
"Still thy tongue!"
"I will cut off her nose."
It seemed to him very probable that she would do that. "Nay," he grumbled, "but I will have thee beaten now, Sakhri."
"Not by her creature, Vali."
Sakhri was beaten with a stick, but by Arslan the Tatar falconer, not by Vali. After the beating she grew quieter and made no more outcry. Lali mocked her a little and then grieved with her-much preferring to have the youthful Sakhri favorite instead of the more sophisticated Zuleika with her watchdog Vali.
"It was written, perhaps," she consoled the girl. "Besides, Zuleika is a beauty."
"She
is an old woman, without shame. She does not love our lord."
This, in Sakhri's eyes, was the greatest of crimes. To make matters worse, Uzbek Khan-who had perhaps grown weary of the feuds among his women-announced that he would ride off with most of his men to raid a caravan moving up from Tabriz. When he mounted and passed under the gate, it was Zuleika who melodiously cried encouragement to him from the arch of the gate. Sakhri had to content herself with stealing up to the deserted tower summit to watch the men ride off.
The tower top, being part of Zuleika's domain, was forbidden to her, and she peered around with lively curiosity at the new canopy to keep off the sun, at a silver samovar, and at a wicker cage in a far corner. The cage held, she discovered, six pigeons. For an instant she wondered if they were trained tumblers in the air, or only fattening for pies-until her eyes blazed, and she loosened the small door of the cage.
No plump doves were these, but stout-breasted blue flyers. Hastily she grasped one and drew it out. Running to the edge of the parapet she cast it into the air and watched intently, The blue pigeon circled the tower several times and then headed swiftly to the south.
These blue pigeons, Sakhri reflected, were carriers-and Irivan lay to the south. She shut the wicker gate of the cage and chewed a strand of hair while she meditated.
She meditated too long. Footsteps ascended the stairs, and Vali's round turban and bulging face appeared above the flagstones.
"Eh," he shrilled, "what doing is this?"
Waddling toward the girl, he tried to seize her in his hands. Sakhri smiled and drew her curved knife, while she kept out of his reach.
"Thou art no keeper of mine," she exclaimed. "If you touch me, your heart will be on the carpet."
Vali was no heroic spirit. He spat as close to her as he dared, and when she slipped down the stair he raised a cry of "Thief!" after her. And that noon in the bathhouse, Zuleika came over to Sakhri and accused her of stealing a girdle clasp of silver-gilt and turquoise.
"That is a lie," said Sakhri calmly. "I took nothing from the tower."
But the Circassian knew that if Zuleika wished, such a girdle clasp would be discovered at the proper moment among her own belongings. Zuleika had described it before witnesses in the bath, and the khan, being under her spell, would believe her tale. Still, they had not noticed that one of the pigeons was missing.
Late that afternoon Sakhri veiled herself heavily and went to sit in the women's garden, summoning Arslan the falconer to her.
"Hast thou," she asked, "in the pigeon house six gray-blue messengers, dark in the head and long in the wing?"
"Aye so, little Head of Flame."
"Are they pigeons of Al Arak?"
The Tatar nodded. What else would they be?
"At the hour of sunset prayer, when the family of thy lord, the khan, are in the mosque, take thou those six in a carrying basket to the tower top where dwells the beautiful Zuleika. Canst thou tell one bird from another?"
"Doth a she-lion know her cubs?"
"Well, then, remove the five blue pigeons from the wicker cage there, and put in their place the six thou hast brought. And if and when one of thy birds of Al Arak-one of the six thou hast put in the tower-returns to the pigeon house with a message upon it, bring thou that message to me. I will take it to the hadji to be read."
Arslan shook his head, scenting a trick. "What fool would write such a message?"
"I know not. Yet I loosed one of the birds from the tower cage and it flew off, to the south. Bethink thee, if the khan returns and finds that one among his women has been sending messages unknown to him, with what punishment would he reward thee, 0 Keeper of the Birds?"
Arslan became thoughtful and finally went away, remarking that what was written would come to pass, but only God knew what was written. After three days he waited for her in the garden, and showed her a tiny silver tube, saying that one of his six pigeons had returned to the pigeon house bearing this tube. He had brought the old hadji with him.
Under the watchful eyes of the two men Sakhri drew a roll of rice paper from the tube and spread it out between her fingers, which trembled a little. It bore several lines of delicate writing, and the scent of it was sweeter than attar of rose. Sakhri recognized Zuleika's handwriting and perfume. She handed it to the hadji, who murmured in surprise: "It is in Persian."
"What says it?"
"'To the Lord of my Life, the Delight of My Eyes, greetings from a heart consumed by the flame of passion.' Tck-Tck. That is clear enough. Now follows-'Come swiftly. Come in the hour before sunrise, I will meet thee, and lead thee to a fitting place. But delay not, for the old eagle flies far and returns not during this moon. Written by the hand of one who is trusted-"
And the old hadji peered down at the Circassian, his eyes pensive under his white turban. "It is signed with thy name, Sakhri."
"My name!" The girl stared. "But-but I know naught of it."
"Still," the hadji pointed out, "it is here." And he folded the letter within his girdle cloth, while Sakhri chewed her lips with rage.
Surely Zuleika and Vali would not know one gray-blue pigeon from another! Surely this missive had been meant for Irivan! And yet-it was apparently a summons to a lover, and bore her own name.
"Did any see thee place thy pigeons in the tower?" she demanded of Arslan.
"Nay. Yet in one thing wast thou mistaken. Instead of five pigeons I found only four within the tower cage."
"Four! And how many didst thou put in, after taking out the four?"
"Six, as thou bade me."
"Fool! Father of fools! Go away and do not speak to me."
Sakhri ran back to her room and threw herself down, to weep in comfort. It was quite clear what had happened. Zuleika had caught Sakhri in her own trap. Now Sakhri was accused of theft, and the old hadji held the love message signed with her name-and even Zuleika's fateful pigeons had been removed from the tower.
She was certain Zuleika meant mischief. Had not she and Vali sent one of the original pigeons from the tower toward Irivan before Arslan substituted his birds for the others? Had it not carried a message?
Sakhri felt as if she were battling against cobwebs-the more she tried to brush them away the more they entangled her. She became moody and began to dread the hour of Uzbek Khan's return.
At the end of the week Arslan brought another missive from the pigeon house. The khan had sent word to his castle. He was going farther west, for antelope hunting, and he warned Arslan and the hadji to look well to his house.
Encouraged by this, Zuleika and Vali began anew tormenting of Sakhri, who had grown too listless to resent their abuse.
Then Sultan Hussayn appeared before the gate of Al Arak.
The lord of Irivan came prepared for war, climbing the hill trails with fivescore mounted riflemen, a small mortar on a camel, and a throng of grooms, body servants, well-wishers, and spectators. He came with five large banners snapping in the chill wind and a bareskulled dervish prancing in front of him, mouthing curses upon the rebellious heads of Al Arak and praise of the magnanimous, the wealthy, the all-wise and loving Muhammad ibn Mokhtar Hussayn al Aziz Kutb ud Din, Sultan of Irivan, Lion of the Hills and Protector of the Poor. And he summoned Arak to surrender unconditionally.
In answer Arslan closed and barred the gate. He had with him some fifty men and boys capable of using weapons. But they found in the arsenal of the castle only a dozen damaged rifles, and any amount of cartridges for those Uzbek Khan and his men had taken away with them.
Sakhri, delirious with excitement, demanded that he send gallopers after the khan.
"Whither?" the Tatar demanded plaintively. "The eagles of the air might find him now, but we could not."
For the first day the sultan contented himself with making camp in the level summit of the ridge before the gate. He watched his servants erect his commodious tent and rope it down against the buffeting of the wind. Then, in a striped silk khalat, he rode forward to see the mortar, set up by his eng
ineers, batter down the gate. The two round shells they had fetched on camelback dropped harmlessly within the castle, and when the engineers tried to fit a stone into the mortar's mouth for a third shot the thing exploded, nearly blowing Hussayn off his horse. Sakhri was certain that Zuleika, ensconced on her tower summit, had waved a veil, encouraging the invaders.
"What will happen now?" she asked Arslan after the sunset prayer.
"Perhaps tomorrow perhaps the next day they will attack the wall with ladders." The Tatar had seen more than one siege in his day and knew what was to be expected. "They may get in, if Allah wills it. Otherwise, they will wait until we have no more food. In two weeks they will take the castle."
"That she-devil sent for the sultan as soon as our lord rode from the gate. She is a spy, and it would be better to throw her over the wall."
"Women always cause trouble," Arslan admitted philosophically. "But I am not such a fool as to throw my lord's favorite wife over the cliff."
"What wilt thou do?" Sakhri demanded of him.
"Eh what is there to do? Wait, and learn thy destiny."
Another day passed, and the ladders were nearly finished. Sakhri could see them lying on the ground by the Sultan's tents.
"Then give scimitars to us women," she demanded of the Tatar. "We will take our places on the wall and die in the fighting rather than be led like sheep to the slave market of Irivan. Thus, the honor of Uzbek Khan will be preserved."
"Wilt thou go to thy room?" Arslan retorted. "By Allah, thou hast caused more trouble than all the men of Sultan Hussayn!"
Bitterly offended, the Circassian went off to shut herself in the tower room looking out upon the gorge, when the assault upon the castle began with a volley of rifle shots. She heard the loud roar of muskets on the wall and much shouting and running about. The crack-crack of distant rifles punctuated the din, and Sakhri listened for the chorus of triumphant shouting that would mean the wall had yielded to the attack.