Gardane shook his head. 'No. Those vast ruins must cover many acres. It will take us two hours or longer to go over them. By then the sun will be high and taking its toll of us. We'll go over the Palace first, and refresh ourselves afterwards.'
As they passed within about two hundred yards of the house, they saw not far from it several tents before which there were horses and a group of people. The group consisted of two men and two women in European clothes, and several native servants. Both the women were wearing light veils, not of the Eastern fashion, but covering the whole of their heads to protect them from the annoyance of flies and also their complexions from the sun. They were just about to mount, and one of the women was already in the saddle. She waved a friendly greeting to Gardane and his officers. They returned it, and rode on.
Two minutes later, they heard the thunder of hooves behind them. Turning, Roger saw that the other party were now all mounted and that, for some reason he could not guess, the horse of the woman who had waved to them had bolted with her. Another moment and she had raced past, vainly striving to rein in her mount.
Roger was riding with Gardane and Mesrop at the head of the French party. Instantly he set spurs to his horse and galloped after her. She was heading straight for the wall of solid rock upon which the ruins stood. Unless she could pull up her animal it would inevitably jib as soon as it saw the fifty-foot-high barrier ahead, and throw her over its head. If he failed to catch up with her and halt her, the odds were that she would be lucky to escape with only serious injuries and not have her brains bashed out.
Once before, many years ago, he had chased and caught a runaway horse. Its rider had been the beautiful Athenais de Rochambeau. The hoofbeats of his horse in pursuit had urged hers on and, not knowing that there was a hidden river in a gully ahead, he had forced her mount in that direction. His action had resulted in Athenais' being thrown and receiving a ducking. Moreover, he had followed her out riding against her wish; so all the thanks he had got was the lash of her riding switch across his face.
Recalling the episode now, he was near smiling at the eventual outcome of that affair. In due course, Athenais had come to love him as passionately as he had her. But this was no case of pressing his unwanted attentions on a spoilt and haughty girl with whom he had fallen desperately in love. He was acting simply on the instinct that would have animated any man to save a woman from disaster.
His comrades had also put their horses into a gallop. So had the men of the woman's party. But Roger bad been quicker off the mark and was a dozen lengths ahead of any of them.
Bending low over his horse's neck, he rowelled the animal savagely. With a fierce neigh, it raced on at still greater speed. When only fifty paces from the rock, he came level with the runaway. He made a grab for its rein and missed. Again he dug his spurs into the flank of his horse. Maddened, it plunged forward, carrying him half a length in front of the other horse. Suddenly the runaway saw the wall of rock ahead. Splaying its hooves, it dug them into the sand and halted rigid.
At the same instant, Roger's mount also saw the barrier. With another terrified neigh, it tensed itself to rear. As Roger felt its muscles contract beneath him, he lifted the heavy riding crop he was holding in his left hand and brought it down with all his force on the animal's head. Simultaneously his right arm shot out and encircled the waist of the woman as she was catapulted from her saddle. Exerting all his strength, he dragged her towards him.
Half-stunned, his stricken horse staggered on a few steps then, its head hanging, halted. Roger pulled the woman he had saved across his saddle bow. Her veil had been blown aside and she had fainted from terror. With her back arched over Roger's knees, her legs dangled down limply on one side and her head, with her mouth gaping open, on the other.
Dropping his riding crop, Roger raised her head into the crook of his left arm. The woman proved to be a girl who looked to be about twenty. Suddenly Roger realised that he was staring down into one of the most exquisitely beautiful faces he had ever seen in his life.
The Land of the Great Sophy
For the next few moments all was confusion. Gardane and the officers with him had ail automatically galloped after Roger, so had the two cavaliers and the woman in the girl's party. One after another they were brought up short against the rock face. Most of them swerved in time to bring their mounts round in a semicircle, but several of the excited horses were out of control, pulled up only when they saw their own danger, and threw their riders.
Roger, streaming with sweat and gasping for breath, slid from his saddle, still holding the girl in his arms. She had Titian hair that came down in a widow's peak on to a broad forehead, below which were unusually widely-spaced eyes. Her face was heart-shaped, with high cheek-bones, a firm jaw line and a pointed, but gcndy rounded, chin, the mound of which was creased by Apollo's cleft. Her nose was straight and slightly freckled; her full-lipped mouth—now a little open—showed two rows of white, even teeth. To the left and a few inches above the corner of her mouth she had a natural beauty spot in the form of a small brown mole.
As Roger gazed down into this angelic face, she gave a little shudder, then her lashes lifted, revealing the colour of those widest eyes, which were the strangest he had ever seen. Their centres were a pale blue, but this merged into grey flecked with yellow, and had a curiously leonine look.
Next moment a handsome, well-dressed, middle-aged man with grey side-whiskers came up to them. He spoke swiftly in Portuguese. As Roger was fluent in Spanish, he got the sense of what the other was saying.
'May the Good Lord bless you, senhor. But for you, my daughter would have been crippled for life by being thrown against this rock face, or might well be dead. Never can I repay you for saving her by your prompt action. Permit me to introduce myself. I am die Marquis de Carvalho e Mello Pombal and the Portuguese Ambassador accredited to the Shah.'
As Roger was still holding the girl in his arms he could not bow, but inclined his head and said in Spanish, 'I am more than happy to have had the good fortune to render your Excellency this service. I am Colonel dc Breuc of the French mission recently sent to the Shah by my Emperor.'
The Marquis smiled. 'Naturally I have been informed of your mission's arrival, and we are—er—diplomatically on opposite sides of the fence. But that will not deter me from being of any service to you that I can while you are in Persia.'
A minute later the other woman, who was older and strongly resembled de Pombal, joined them and took the girl over from Roger, as the Marquis said, 'Monsieur le Colonel, my sister, the Senhora Anna dc Arahna.' By then the whole company had crowded round and it was suggested that the young lady should be escorted back to the tents. But she had suffered no harm at all, and rallied surprisingly quickly after her faint. Smiling first at her aunt, then at Roger, she said:
'I fainted only from fright, and if we put off going over the ruins until later, the sun will roast us to our marrow bones. I shall be under no disability if this gallant gentleman who risked his life to save mine will give me his arm.'
Surprised and delighted, Roger returned her smile. 'Senhorita, you overwhelm me. I could ask no greater reward than the pleasure of escorting you.'
Almost simultaneously with the Ambassador there had arrived upon the scene a tall, dark, beetle-browed man of about thirty. At the Senhorita's request for Roger's arm, his face had taken on a sullen look; but he swiftly hid his annoyance when the Marquis introduced him as Senhor Don Alfonso de Queircoz, First Secretary of the Embassy.
Roger duly presented General Gardane and the other French officers to the four Portuguese, while the grooms tethered the horses in the shade thrown by the lofty platform on which the Palace stood. Then the Senhora de Arahna, with her brother on one side of her and Gardane on the other, led the way along to a steep ramp, which led up to the first of many lofty flat-topped gateways.
The carvings on these gateways had been only partially blurred by time. Most of them had on one side pairs of hu
ge, mythological beasts, and on the other pairs of human heads, with curly beards and high, conical hats that looked like those of Assyrians. About the main hall of the Palace there were still standing several sixty-foot-high pillars. In the vast sunken Treasury only the stumps of the pillars which had supported the roof remained, but there were scores of them, covering an area that in itself would have provided a large enough ground space for the Palace of any minor King. Yet the most impressive sight provided by the ruins was several very broad staircases with shallow steps. On both sides they were flanked by carved reliefs of a procession of men, each bearing some object: a jar of wine, a dish of fruit, a dead gazelle, a string of pearls and so on. They were the twenty-eight Kings bringing tribute to their overlord Darius who, from their subjugation, took his title: King of Kings.
As they walked slowly round, Roger and his breathtakingly lovely companion found that they could converse quite easily in a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and French. He learned that her name was Lisala and that, three years earlier, her father had taken her from her convent outside Lisbon to accompany him to Persia. Apart from its extremes of climate, she liked the country and admired its people for their pride in their own civilisation and for placing such a high value on all forms of art. But she found life there monotonous owing to the social limitations.
There were many feasts and jollifications with exciting displays of juggling, horse-racing, wrestling, polo and so on; but the European population of Isfahan consisted only of a handful of merchants and occasional travellers. The Portuguese, Dutch and Russians, alone among the Western nations, had Embassies permanently established there, so she was almost entirely deprived of the pleasures that a young woman of her age and station had, she felt, a right to expect.
Ingenuously she went on to say, 'One cannot have a love affair with a Persian, a Turk or an Afghan. Alfonso de Queircoz is mad about me, of course, but I do not find him attractive. Since Prince Galitzin left the Russian Embassy six months ago, there has not been a man in the whole city whom I should be pleased to have my hand, let alone aught else. That is why this is such a happy day for me. I hope I shall see a lot of you.'
Staggered as he was by her frankness, Roger appreciated the reason for it. At the age she had left Lisbon she would normally have been about to be married off; so by now would probably be the mother of one or more babies, queening it in the highest society, with a dozen handsome beaux seeking her favours. He was fully conscious of his own good looks; but not so vain as to suppose that, in Lisala's unusual situation, she would not have regarded any personable man who came into her life as manna in the desert. He could only render his thanks to the Goddess of Fortune that it was he, and not one of the attractive junior officers of the mission, who had had the luck to save her from breaking her beautiful neck. He had been favoured by a splendid start over all those youngsters who were coming up with the caravan and, in due course, would meet Lisala, and he was determined not to lose it.
Resorting quite unscrupulously to the oldest gambit in the game of love, he pressed her arm gently and said, 'Senhorita, our meeting today was pre-ordained. For a long time past I, too, have suffered from a terrible loneliness. My wife died in childbirth'—which was true enough, although that had happened some twelve years before—'and since then I have come upon no-one who I feel could expunge the memory of her from my mind'—which was a thumping lie. 'But the moment I looked into your lovely face, it was as though a new sun had risen on the horizon of my life.'
'Can that be true ?' she murmured.
'Indeed it is,' he assured her; and as he said it he really meant it. 'Moreover, although I am attached to this mission, I am not strictly of it. I am an aide-de-camp and friend of the Emperor whom I have known intimately for many years; and a Commander of the Legion d'Honneur. I tell you this not out of boastfulness, but simply to let you know that General Gardane has no power to send me off, as he might any of the others, on some special assignment. My time is my own, to do with as I will; so, when we return to Isfahan I shall count myself blessed if you will allow me to see you frequently, and place myself entirely at your service.'
By this time the party had spent an hour wandering round the ruins, marvelling diat, over two thousand years ago, an Eastern Monarch should have had architects and craftsmen capable of building him a palace with loftier halls and more spacious staircases than those at Versailles. To have fully explored the whole area, with its avenues of strange beasts and innumerable scenes of Court life in the distant past carved on tall walls, would have taken half a day; but it was already well after nine o'clock, and the sun was climbing swiftly in the blue vault of the heavens. As they had yet to see the Royal Tombs, which lay some four kilometres distant, the Ambassador and the General agreed that it would be as well to set off there without further delay.
Mounting their horses, the party rode for a quarter of an hour along a track below the towering mountain barrier, until they reached the tombs. That of Cyrus the Great was in the form of a seven-step pyramid surmounted by a thirty-foot-high burial chamber; but those of Darius the Great, Xerxes and several of their relatives were man-made caves hewn out of the cliff, their entrance being fifty feet above ground level, so inaccessible. They had elaborately-carved doorways, above which were scenes from the lives of their occupants, and much lower down, other scenes: one of outstanding interest, as it portrayed Darius on a very small horse, but with an enormous head-dress, accepting the surrender of the Roman Emperor Valerian, whose legions he had defeated, kneeling before him.
By ten o'clock, both parties were back at the small house among the trees, where they had first seen one another. The encampment of tents near it had been brought from Isfahan by the Ambassador, for to have made the journey to Persepolis and back in one day would have placed too great a strain on his ladies, and they had slept there the previous night. One was a fair-sized marquee, to feed and relax in, and he invited the French officers to accept his hospitality there. Extra supplies were bought from the family that occupied the little house near by, and they all settled down to enjoy themselves.
Happily for all concerned, de Pombal had brought a dozen bottles of his own wine. It was rose colour and they all declared it to be delicious. He told them then that it was a special cuvee made only from grapes grown in a district near Shiraz, and had a romantic association because it was almost certainly the wine which, centuries before, the poet-astronomer, Omar Khayyam, had praised so highly.
Gardane remarked that he had been surprised to find that, although in the Koran wine was forbidden to Mohammedans, nearly all the nobles he had met in Isfahan drank it freely.
At that de Pombal laughed and replied, 'For any man who is rich, there is no difficulty about that. He has only to give his doctor a sufficiently handsome bribe to receive in exchange a certificate that drinking wine is essential to his health. All the Shahs have habitually enjoyed wine, and some of them have become confirmed drunkards.
'The Shah Safe, who reigned in the latter part of the seventeenth century, became so besotted every night while drinking in the company of his favourites that he even forced drink on others who had religious scruples. When his Grand Vizier refused to join in a debauch, he flung a cup of wine in the poor man's face, then ordered him to swallow a decoction of opium—which is not forbidden in the Qur'an—and so reduced him to a gibbering idiot for the amusement of the assembled company.
'These Persian nobles appear to be highly civilised and are models of politeness but, believe me, they are the most treacherous schemers in the world, and cruel beyond belief. On another occasion this same Shah, on hearing that some young men had become tipsy in public and had made a nuisance of themselves, sent his police out into the city with orders that they should, on the spot, rip open the belly of every man they found drunk. Even today, should a barber's hand slip while he is shaving the head of some grandee, and he nicks the scalp, he is liable to have his hand cut off at the wrist.
'They
are, too, the most inveterate liars. You may have noticed that, to impress you, they invariably take an oath upon a matter. They will swear by their soul, by their parents, by their beards—which they hold in such high regard that a man can be heavily fined for pulling out a few hairs from another's—even by the Imam Hasein; yet not a word of what they have been saying is the truth.'
Out of politeness to his guests, the Ambassador had been speaking in French, and one of the officers asked, 'Who, Your Excellency, is the Imam Hasein?'
The Marquis smiled. 'I forgot that you have come only recently to Persia. Hasein is their most venerated saint. He was the heir of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet and founder of the Shiah sect. Having married a Sassanian Princess, he was urged to contest the Caliphate and with a small band of followers advanced on Mecca. He had been promised the support of the Governor of Kufa, who commanded a much larger force; but the Governor betrayed and attacked him on the plain of Kerbela. Although cut off from water, and suffering from terrible thirst, his little band fought to the death, so he is accounted a martyr. Each year a Passion Play based on this tragedy is enacted in every town throughout Persia, and fanatics gashing themselves with knives and with horse-shoes sewn to their bare skins parade the streets wailing, "Hasein our Lord is dead."'
After they had refreshed themselves, the ladies and the two Portuguese noblemen retired to their respective tents, while the French, using their tunics for pillows, lay down in the marquee to doze through the great heat of the early afternoon. At five o'clock they all partook of another picnic meal. When they had finished it, camp was struck and the whole party set off back to Shiraz.
Lisala and her aunt rode only the first few miles, then transferred to a form of carriage common in Persia. It was actually a horse litter, having a narrow body borne on two very large wheels and had shafts both back and front, between which horses were harnessed. As the vehicle was hooded, Roger could no longer continue a delightful conversation he had been having with his newly-found divinity; so he cantered up to the front of the column and joined the Ambassador, Gardane and the black-browed Don Alfonso de Queircoz.
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