by Harold Lamb
Often she had risen with that thought, and it had become a kind of game that she played, and lost. This particular day seemed to her important above all, perhaps because of the bell that pealed for her.
When she stepped out on the ledge, she could hear it, faint and still clear as a peal from elfland. Then the wind buffeted her, and she had to hold to the cliff when she descended the steps.
At the bottom Badr, who had appeared to be asleep with his rifle over his knees, rose to let her pass. He did not lift his eyes to her face, and Michal flushed vividly, realizing that this watchman of the night must have known that she had been sleeping with the American.
"Marhaba, khanim [Honor to thee, lady]," murmured the Kurd.
His face lighted when Michal smiled. Silently he pointed behind him to her suitcases piled under a black felt robe.
Mist billowed past them like smoke driven by the wind and somewhere the sun began to burn through, warming her. Curiously she surveyed the domain opening up before her eyes, for she had noticed nothing when she had arrived the night before, worried that she might not find Jacob. Bearded men in gray smocks, driving clumsy buffalo, stared at her as they passed on the way to the fields where others were already at work winnowing grain by tossing it into the air and letting the wind gusts carry away the chaff. On a clay threshing floor stolid buffalo were dragging sleds over piled-up barley, to separate the grain. Already women were coming in, carrying wide woven baskets of grapes on their heads, their eyes moving irresistibly toward the slender foreign girl who wore white instead of black.
Children drew close to Michal, gaining courage when they were not driven away. Girl children no taller than Michal's waist carried babies slung on their backs. Their dark eyes watched every move she made.
Michal felt very inquisitive about this friendly place. When the mist shredded away she observed that it was not a village. Cassocked monks walked in the fruit garden near her, aware, she fancied, of her presence. Suddenly and irresistibly Michal laughed, realizing that she had intruded within a monastery. Hearing her merriment, the children crowded closer to grasp and kiss her hand in turn.
Her day, she anticipated, was beginning well. This monastery and farmyard and nursery might be antiquated compared to Mr. Parabat's garden, and it certainly lacked servants, but the people seemed glad to see her, and that meant much to Michal.
Then Jacob came toward her. The gardens and the people receded from his moving figure and she felt his lean strength, the steadiness of his eyes upon her. He carried himself as if he wore invisible chains.
At that instant wonder touched Jacob; the brightness of her hair, the flush under her eyes that would not look up at him, even the slight scent of her body in the sun dazed him, and only with an effort did he keep from stretching out his arm to her. But he stopped, breathless. "I wasn't drunk last night," he said stubbornly. "It was some stuff burning in that candlestand."
That was not what he had wanted to say; the words came out of his fear that he had hurt her. She gave no sign of what she felt, only saying, "It doesn't matter, does it?"
It mattered terribly to him; her voice, remembered through the night, touched to the core of him.
The happiness she felt was too deep for words. She looked up curiously at the gray cliff that had become her home. "Did you pick out that cave for yourself, Jacob, or do they quarantine guests up there? Or is it really a shrine?"
"It's really a cliff dwelling of the oldest inhabitants, who had to keep out of reach of animals and human enemies."
"Does it still work that way?"
Jacob smiled at her sudden interest. "I don't think there are any enemies around. Even the wild buffalo have been tamed to the plow."
Nowadays, he thought, a rifle grenade would make short work of such a cave refuge. But he did not tell Michal that. He wondered at her quick fancy that accepted the reality of monastic life centuries ago. Just as she had accepted Mr. Parabat's bungalow.
"Do you think they will let us stay?" she wondered.
"Do you want to stay?" he asked. "I thought you wouldn't leave Riyat." When Michal did not answer, he pressed her. "How did Sir Clement let you come up here?"
"He didn't. Don't you know by now that I am gunshy, Jacob? Besides, he entrusted me to Badr, whose honor is now involved in keeping me well and out of harm."
Almost indifferently she explained that the frontier skirmish between the troops and the tribes had rolled back from the foothills into the ravine of Riyat, so close that artillery fire could be heard. Sir Clement, much disturbed, and anxious for Jacob's return, had sent down a written request to Mullah Ismail to pass Michal and the American through the Kurdish lines under a flag of truce. But he had had no answer and was on the point of arranging to be carried down himself. . .
Suddenly her eyes met Jacob's. "I'm lying, and I hate it. I came because I wanted to. When you left the garden, I didn't think you would ever come back, although they all said you would. I couldn't stand waiting, so I worked on Sir Clement to remove me from the battle zone and to carry the message to Garcia. There, I feel better now." A smile touched her lips. "It must be the monastery. I hate to lie up here."
Leaning on his cane, his body rigid, Jacob felt a surge of happiness. And Michal was silent, seeing the hunger in his face.
At the entrance to the crypt Michal's mood changed abruptly. She had been delighted with the gardens and the passive men who seemed to be shaped by the labor their hands performed. Moving as if in time with some music within her, she stopped before the heavy soiled curtain in the dim corridor. "Ought we to go in there? I'm afraid—no, not actually afraid, Jacob. But I feel another omen coming on." Curiously, she nodded. "There shouldn't be two in one day, particularly on this day."
"Two? What was——"
"The church bell," she explained triumphantly. "I thought it was ringing for me at daybreak, and probably it was merely ringing for matins or whatever the first occasion is."
By now Jacob knew how Michal chattered when she was nervous. "This monastery doesn't have a bell," he assured her.
"But I heard it, Jacob."
"You heard something."
"It was a bell."
Somehow it became important to her that the bell should be real, in spite of the fact that Jacob would not admit that it existed.
Once the curtain was drawn back, she stared, intrigued at the figures on the wall. To his surprise Jacob found the altar lighted by a dazzling shaft of sunlight that descended through a cleft in the rock.
"They're nice," she announced. "But who are they—the shepherd lad and lass?"
"Saint George, alias Mar Giorgios, and his lady, name unknown."
Under Michal's urging, he told her the story of the two as he had interpreted it.
"So they burned her," she murmured, "because of him. And there was never really a dragon to writhe under his lance point."
Jacob smiled. This woman had a child's gift of blending fairy tales with reality. "I think Saint George fought his battle inside himself, and people invented the dragon afterward to make it picturesque."
Moving restlessly about the shaft of light, she investigated the tarnished fittings of the altar. "I like my new home. It will be very simple to go to church Sundays, if we can keep track of the Sundays."
He would be gone by the next Sunday. The news from Riyat made it urgent not to delay longer. There was no alternative to pushing on after Daoud, who had been missing three days now. While there was no evidence of a road, he meant to try to follow whatever path Father Hyacinth had taken.
Quizzically Michal eyed Saint George and his lady. "Is it really necessary to keep on? Why can't you stay here and wait for what is going to happen? It will happen anyway."
"I told Sir Clement I'd try——"
Her lips pressed together hard, Michal stared up at him. "Of course. You must go riding off over mountain peaks because politicians in Moscow or London have made a mess. Didn't you say your patron, Saint George, fought his battle withou
t benefit of a dragon?" Her words came softly, quickly. "I'm sorry to be cross today, Jacob. My mind goes every which way when I try to think of plans. I had a plan for today and it went pop, as usual. Now, if you knew how hungry I am, you would lead me in to dinner."
It was odd to watch Michal at the long table, where Mar Shimun paid her friendly and quiet attention, and the priests talked in undertones, in awe of their lovely guest. Somehow, Michal managed to exchange words with the patriarch in good French mixed with bad Arabic. She wanted to know about her bell. And Mar Shimun explained, as Jacob anticipated, that the monastery had no bell; she had heard the pealing of the bell of the mountain which he, the patriarch, had never seen, but which sounded in honor of their patron, Mar Giorgios.
Where was this great cloche? None of them at the table, the patriarch insisted, had seen it. So it must be within the mountain itself.
When they sat on the quilt at the side of the ledge that evening to watch the sun drop over the sea of clouds, Jacob puzzled over the mysterious bell, which the monks had admitted hearing. It seemed to exist, and it must be a big one, audible when the wind blew from it toward the monastery. Such a sound would carry with the wind for twenty miles. And it came from the direction in which Daoud had disappeared.
"What do you think?" he asked Michal, who was intent on the sunset.
"I think Aucassin never asked Nicolette what she thought."
"What do you think, Michal?"
"Do you want to know?" Her face resting against her bare arm was tinged by the sunset, and she stared into it as if to see beyond the glow in the west. "I should have warned you. I was thinking, Jacob, of the lovely shop-windows in the Rue Saint Honoré, and not of Saint George. I was thinking of the glow in the rose window of Notre Dame, when you look over your shoulder at it, and of the nice jasmine bushes in the grounds of the embassy at Athens. It's all back there with my vanished youth, and I loved it." She nodded stubbornly. "I warn you that I depend on my luxuries. I have five evening frocks—of the vintage of thirty-nine—packed in the bags that Badr guards so zealously. This frivolous part of me is the one I enjoy most; I have no patriotism, and I believe in none of the old clichés. Besides, I detest climbing mountains in the general direction of nowhere." Her eyes, half closed, turned to Jacob. "The beginning of today was such a happy one. Now that's not a full confession but it will do for you to go on. Do we start at dawn tomorrow?"
Jacob did not answer. Now that she had said it, he realized that she meant to go on, and that it was in a way inevitable that she should do so.
"Do we start at dawn to find the bell of Saint George?" she repeated tranquilly.
"I can take you back to Riyat," Jacob answered.
"Having accomplished how much? And to what would we go back?" She seemed not at all concerned about that, and smiled without enthusiasm. "I can see Sir Clement's face, and hear his cold disapproval. At least I won't be bored with myself while we find this Daoud individual. But how?"
No, there was no use discussing what they might do. They had to keep on just because they could not retrace their steps, easy as that might be.
"Jacob," exclaimed Michal, "you need not think of evasive tactics. I'm not going to be left to myself again."
"Then call Badr."
Dubiously, she looked at him. "Are you taking away my last remaining servant?"
"Yes."
Clapping her hands, she called, until the driver's dark figure burst from the stable below them and ran to the cliff, scattering the watching children. On the step by Jacob he came to rest, his great body poised in readiness to rush away as soon as he was given a command.
Producing the bronze horse and the photograph of the mountain range, Jacob showed them to the attentive Kurd; then, invoking the talismanic name of Araman, he tried to make clear by signs that he and Michal wanted to be guided along the cliff toward Araman. Badr understood quickly enough, but his eyes dropped and he shook his head stubbornly. He looked pained but very determined.
"Ei, Badr," Michal cried suddenly. "Baraye man. Subz"
Like an indicator on a dial, the mountaineer's attention fastened on her. Visibly he struggled inwardly, then swiftly seized her hand in both his, bending his head, murmuring, "Ei, khanim."
"There!"
Jacob had ceased to be surprised at anything Michal did. "What did you tell him?" he asked.
"To do it for me. Tomorrow at dawn. That was when you wanted to go, wasn't it?"
It exasperated him that this man was ruled by Michal's wish; the Kurd's allegiance lay with her and the need to keep her from harm. And he, Jacob, could not do that. He understood beyond any doubt that Michal dreaded going on.
"Ask for something, Michal," he demanded suddenly. "For anything."
"I asked very nicely for something in the garden at Riyat, but you pretended not to know."
Jacob shook his head. "It wasn't pretending."
"Very well." Like a pleased child she smiled. "Now, can I rest and go to sleep?"
Her quick upward glance caught the disappointment he could not hide, and her slim fingers twined into his. "I'm not really hardened to this mountaineering yet, Jacob, and in about one minute I shall be asleep."
"It's this altitude." He tried to make the words casual. "You don't know it but you're lying down about ten thousand feet in the air."
Drowsily Michal blinked at the crimson clouds. "Higher than Saint Moritz, where the servants take off your ski boots when you come in at this sunset hour. I liked having my ski boots taken off, Jacob. There are ghosts of Scottish chatelaines in me, I suppose, and Finnish I-don't-know-whats, all of them my great-ancestors. So I'm unreliable, and often you won't like me. Let's see. You must have the ghost of a Dutch Meister in you, who wants to sail his ship over all the seven seas."
"No, he was a printer who set up type himself." With one hand Jacob was filling his pipe, frowning. "I'm his rightful descendant. I write at desks, read in armchairs, and observe people from verandas."
"Do you call this one?"
"Yes. I've hardly been off the pavements or out of car seats. I'm about as efficient in a spot like this as a doormat. Your Aucassin fellow wouldn't even waste a spear on me."
Her eyes did not open at him; she might have been asleep. "Aucassin, beau doux ami," she whispered.
"That's a fairy tale. I'd go mad"—suddenly his voice broke and he caught himself savagely—"if anything should hurt you now." Gently her fingers caressed his. "You are like this cliff, Jacob. You're here, and you don't change into something not yourself, and there's nothing I can do about it, to change anything. Promise me"—her head lifted and her flushed, tired face turned to him—"you'll always be here."
"Here?"
"With me."
Looking at his pipe, he put it away. "I promise."
Coming in from the fields, the cultivators of Mar Giorgios watched the foreign man and woman who sat on the cliff, one smoking a piece of wood, the other asleep, holding hands like children. At the stables, the people of the fields heard that the two were going on the next morning whither they had been summoned.
When Badr brought the four horses to the steps after the last stars had vanished in a gray mist, Mar Shimun appeared, smiling, with a boy behind him. When Michal and Jacob came down to the horses he muttered a blessing and then shook hands solemnly in European fashion. Apparently it did not surprise him that his guests were going on. The boy, however, held a long talk with Badr, who approached Jacob apologetically. A gift of money was needed for the monastery, he made clear. Not pay, but a gift, to compensate for feeding the horses.
Jacob handed a bank note to the boy, who took it awkwardly.
"I'd forgotten. It's the last of our civilization, Michal, that we are leaving here."
All that first day on the shoulder of the mountain—until Badr pointed out the light—Jacob was troubled by a sense of familiarity with his surroundings.
There was the gray wall of granite always on his right. Yet he could not escape a convict
ion that he had been here before under the same gray massif where dark rhubarb grew wild and bright pheasants flitted away over the ridges. It bothered him because he knew that he had never been on such a mountain, above the cloud level.
It was difficult for the three of them and the pack horse to make any progress. Badr, in the lead, picked his way around the rock outcroppings and across the gullies that had appeared impassable from the monastery. Their unshod ponies scrambled down clay banks and plowed up slopes of loose shale courageously. Watching the Kurd closely, Jacob decided that he was following no landmarks and was contenting himself with keeping as close as possible to the cliff.
Still, Jacob regretted that he could discern no trail of any kind. The occasional hoofmarks of animals meant nothing along these uplands where herds both tame and wild grazed. By the same token, the monastery people had not come this way often.
It would have been a rare chance to find a road up here. Even the Romans had never penetrated this far into Asia—the stone skeletons of their highways lay far to the westward, lost in the immensity of the deserts they had never conquered.
Soon the route became more difficult; they were forced to circle huge pinnacles that stood out from the granite wall. No blasting by man-made explosives could ever clear a way through these natural towers of rock.
"Does all this," he asked Michal, "remind you of anything?"
"Uhhm," she agreed, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle. "These aiguilles are exactly like cathedral spires."
Contemplating the nearest gray pinnacle, Jacob shook his head. "More like flying buttresses. We have to go around them, anyway." Michal lifted a speculative gaze. "Are we going sunwise or otherwise? The sun is certainly keeping us company."
It was true enough, as she had said, that the cliff gave them the illusion of rounding a natural edifice enormously larger than any Notre Dame.