by Harold Lamb
"If we only knew what Araman hides," murmured the Englishman.
For a second Jacob thought of Vasstan, then dismissed the German from his mind. It was odd how each foreigner saw the mount with different eyes: to Vasstan the summit was no more than a good observation post from which to view the tribal strife he anticipated; Daoud beheld in it only a unique laboratory of the life of thousands of years ago; Matejko had found in it a last refuge, rendered endurable by Michal's presence.
And Michal had made it her home.
The two men were alone one afternoon after Michal had gone to sit with Imanya at the silk loom, when Sir Clement lay back and frankly admitted defeat.
Both Jacob and Daoud had told him in careful detail all that they had observed on the summit that he himself had not seen.
"I've ransacked my poor brains until they ache, Jacob, without finding an explanation of this place. There's nothing."
"There's something," Jacob smiled over his copy of Aristotle, "because you're trying to find it."
"What have we found? A dozen families that speak a language of the dawn world. A fire altar as old as that. Beautiful bronze work, cliff sculpture, astronomical instruments, and an aeolian harp newer than that but still hoary with age. Wall paintings"—he glanced up at the figures on the wall—"of purely^ oriental legends, alongside what you describe as a fantastic collection of European weapons."
"And the people watch expectantly for something to materialize from beyond the valley," added Jacob.
"Even so—and we have arrived—it doesn't yield an answer. Your Aristotle couldn't give meaning to this mystery!"
For once the orientalist sounded petulant. Jacob, who had threshed over all that long ago in his mind, went on reading calmly, because it interested him. "If our world is believed to be the only one," he read aloud, "who can suppose that it should be destroyed never to reappear? Since what generated it exists unchanging——"
He broke off, thinking. Sir Clement said, "Aristotle seems to mean that our inhabited earth can't be destroyed unless the universe that created it should cease to exist."
"Yes. That's hopeful. And it has a point of hope for us."
"I'd like to hear it."
"Araman has endured for fantastic ages—as long as nine or ten Romes. Why? It has not been destroyed because what created it still exists?
Sir Clement was silent, his tired eyes brightening. More and more he had come to rely on Jacob's tenacity and his sensitivity. The lame man had a mind like a surgeon's, intent and probing with a delicate touch.
"What, or who, made Araman?" Jacob muttered over his cold pipe. "One thing's clear enough. These people have been retreating. I don't know if their original homes in the lower valleys dried up, or if they were driven out by enemies. But certainly, in their retreat, they took refuge on this summit. They left the steps precarious and built a wall; they invented the sun telegraph to flash warnings or summons from their refuge. As time went on, their numbers thinned out. Araman was occupied as a last refuge; there's nowhere else to retreat."
"That's sound," the Englishman admitted.
"A lot of work was done once on this summit—and then neglected. Evidently the people wanted to protect something very much, their ark of the covenant, or—What did you expect to find here?"
"Some tomb or prophet that could influence the tribes." His eyes swept the room with almost desperate longing, pausing on the paintings and the bronze winged horse. "From all that Eve heard, and even from Daoud's instinct, I am convinced that some such force exists here. Yet we've not hit on a sign of it."
"No. But in your notes you wrote that we might be in the presence of some truth we did not recognize."
"I meant the truth of what had been in the past."
"Something of that may have endured."
"If you invoke a miracle."
Jacob stared at his pipe. "I wonder what a miracle really is. Isn't it quite a natural happening that no one anticipates?"
"You aren't inclining to the supernatural?" Sir Clement sighed. "Perhaps I did hope for a miracle, Jacob. I've hoped so long. As the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes may belong only to the past, so the shrine of Araman may. Well, Jacob, do you intend waiting for a miracle?"
"No—looking for one. I can't describe exactly what I mean. I only feel there's a force hidden from us because it's invisible to us." Thoughtfully his eyes held the other's. "Once you called this place a storm center. I suppose a physical storm center is caused by nothing more than a rush of warm air upward. No one sees that happen, but it does happen. I don't know what the impulse of force could be here—except that we've not seen it yet. It's up to us to identify it."
"By imagination?"
"No. We know it is strange to us. We can begin to search by taking account of anything that appears unusual or inexplicable. Instead of looking for things, we can search for things that have in themselves the principle of force."
Glancing at the book Jacob held, Sir Clement asked, "So says Aristotle?"
Jacob laughed. "Yes. So he did."
"Right! To find what is missing, look for the invisible." He stretched out lank arms. "Jacob, I've been a mewling mummy, a fossicking dodo! If nothing's possible, turn to the impossible. It's simple as Holy Writ. We'll scan every pebble of Araman. I'm going with you at break of dawn. No, I'm going."
His eyes fell grave. "The only thing that matters is, if we don't find it, somebody else will."
Bundled up in scarf and overcoat, Bigsby insisted on starting around the summit the next day. To Michal, who challenged him instantly, he explained that they were making a new search. "We're seeking for the evidence of things not seen, my dear."
"To find what?" Michal looked very skeptical.
"We don't know. I'm not senile. It was Jacob Ide's idea to strip our minds bare as your aeolian harp, to be touched by the intangible. It's hard for an old man like me; I've so much rubbish stored away from textbooks and journals of learned societies."
Michal grinned cheerfully. "Poor darling."
"Michele!" A new, sharp note came into his voice. "You can be flippant afterward, not now. Four months ago I would not have told you what I am telling you—that the lives of all four foreigners are in jeopardy here."
"Aren't there five of us?"
"You are safe, I think. The tribes would not injure a woman. We four men may be secure in Araman. But if one of us ventures outside now, the Kurds are not apt to let him through. They are aroused by so many casualties. Even Daoud's attitude has changed. We have become hostages of a sort, for what is done by foreigners outside. And," he added quickly, "we can't very well blame the Kurds for that."
Something of light went out of Michal's face. "I'm glad you told me." Her hand touched Jacob's.
Unwontedly silent, she followed them as they made their rounds, Jacob smoking some of the tobacco the Englishman had brought. For a while they stood at the water wheel, and Michal pointed at the summit of the wall. A line of large ugly carrion birds were perched there. She had not seen them before.
"There's something," Michal volunteered, and waited.
"Vultures," said Clement Bigsby. Then he said "Hullo!" And after a minute, "First trace, Michele. There is something missing we've not noticed." Turning, he surveyed the white meadows and bare groves. "The cemetery."
"Cemetery?" Michal tried to understand. "We've an observatory but no cemetery."
"Graves then. Almost any old settlement will have its graves close at hand. Cairo is practically surrounded by graves."
"Oh, they burn their dead."
And Jacob added gravely, "I saw one burned down at the steps."
As he stared at the vultures, Clement seemed relieved. Michal wondered whether the vultures came looking for food in the dead of winter. After all, even vultures must eat. In India somewhere she had seen them sitting like this in towers. In the Towers of Silence. . . . Jacob was silent, his fine head lifted, his dark hair curled over his forehead, and it was time she cut it again with h
er scissors. In his silence he imagined things that might be nice for her, and she waited to hear. . . .This joy he had in little things, in pity and pride. . .he was never afraid except for her, and she wished that he could be afraid for himself and her, and cruel to others, as other men could be.
Now they were staring at the rock portraits of the kneeling emperor and the Asiatic king. The part of her mind that kept track of their words, waiting for something interesting, heard Clement exclaim, "There's a cross bearing!"
"What is a cross bearing?" Michal demanded.
"A bearing is a direction in which you are thinking or going, right or wrong. If you hit on another bearing that crosses it, you may be right at that point. Useful also in directing artillery fire. Now somebody carved this Roman imperator, Valerian, in the rock to perpetuate his surrender. Judging by Jacob, somebody else brought to the cavern the body armor of a Holy Roman emperor, Barbarossa, to preserve it. The two things match up. Are they trophies or mementos, or what?"
"I thought," Michal ventured, "you two were going to rid your minds of logic."
"So we were. And we're not managing very well. But there's something odd in those exhibits, as Jacob realized at once. There was even a chariot of early Rome. Marcus Antonius—Mark Antony—used a chariot, I suppose because Cleopatra did. He might have been king of western Asia, but he died by his own sword, although Cleopatra had much to do with that." He thought for a space. "In one way or another we've just mentioned three kings—Valerian, Barbarossa, Mark Antony—I don't know why. There may be another cross bearing in that."
Three kings, Michal thought. Three, who had died with their legions or whatever they had when they marched into Asia. Kings shall draw his chariot—but whose? Mark Antony had been of the west—Cleopatra of the east, and he had died because he loved her too much.
Michal's feet were wet, and she felt cold even in the wan sunlight. She felt cold and useless and unhappy. Suddenly she pointed. "The bird bath is frozen."
The men who had been moving toward the altar fire stopped and looked at the great marble bowl set upon a pedestal. Breaking the thin ice with her bare hand, Michal murmured, "So the swallows can drink. Sometimes they come in swarms."
"No doubt they do," Clement said, "but this wasn't made for a bird bath, Michele."
"It certainly looks like one."
"It looks more like a baptismal font."
Surprised, Michal blinked.
"But it was made before the time of baptism—Christian, at least. Worshippers used to cleanse their hands with water before approaching the altar. People clung to the idea of cleansing themselves. Later on all mosques had a pool in the outer courtyard and our churches kept a basin of water by the entry door."
The men moved on, dismissing the font from their thoughts. Feeling neglected, Michal wandered up to the altar where Daoud was at work, measuring the depth of the hollow in the blackened cracked limestone eaten away year by year by the heat of the fire. Putting on some fresh wood, being careful not to disturb the Kurd, she smiled at him. People usually smiled back at her, but Daoud only glanced up somberly and waited. Michal thought she might get a cross bearing from him, although she was not very good at that.
"Have you found out their word for this yet, Daoud?"
"Hestia. It means hearth fire, or sacrifice."
Abruptly, to her surprise, Daoud wheeled and caught up a length of wood, hurling it at the line of vultures perched on the parapet near them. The ungainly scavengers flapped off. For the first time she noticed that he had an amber rosary, like Father Hyacinth's, twisted around his wrist.
"They used to perch on the Towers of Silence, in India," she observed, watching them fly away.
"Yes, on the dakhmas," said Daoud angrily. "Where the ignorant Zoroastrians of today expose their dead, stripping the bodies—opening the legs and folding the arms—for the scavenger birds to tear. Don't you see how this place is like the top of a Tower of Silence?" He stared at her, and she thought he must be overtired.
"These people are like the attendants of the dead. Suppose it is a place of burial for those who intrude. You are a foreigner. You should go away quickly, with Sir Clement Bigsby. You should go now, Miss Michal!"
Startled by the change in the young Kurd, thinking that he was angry because he was frightened, she did not know what to answer, and hurried away to Jacob.
At the locked door of the armory Vasstan and the Pole had joined the searchers. Sir Clement looked like a ruffled bird as he argued with the German, who exclaimed, "I did not find the Waffe to have them taken away to the British Museum, like the marble frieze your Lord Elgin stole from the Parthenon. No, I will not show them again."
The marbles of the Parthenon. When she had been Miss Thorne, Michal had gone to sit in the moonlight on the steps of the Parthenon, trying to keep far away from the voices of guides explaining to tourists the miracle of grace lighted by the moon. She had felt it behind her, just back of where her eyes could see, the loveliness shaped from stone by forgotten hands. So keenly had she felt it that she had wanted to cry.
"The Acropolis is still there," Sir Clement was saying, "but you chaps left precious little of the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, or the temple in Pergamum."
Then Jacob's voice, restrained, "Herr Vasstan, don't you want to bring out the Byzantine helmet at least for Sir Clement to examine?"
With a grunt Vasstan looked at Michal, then unlocked the door and disappeared inside. The Englishman turned his back punctiliously on the open door. Colonel Matejko moved closer to her. "What is it that they have said, gracious friend?" His voice spoke for her alone.
When Michal told him, he said, "Ah, the Germans. They have stripped the cathedral of the Lady Mary at Krakow, where I went with my wife."
Self-consciously he spoke, his handsome head bent toward her, his eyes seeking hers. Uneasily, Michal felt that he was not thinking so much then of his wife as of holding her, in his arms. She smiled up at him brightly, aware that Jacob was watching her.
It pleased Vasstan to hand over the gray-gold helmet to his enemy, and he drank in Sir Clement's alert interest as the other traced the Greek lettering with his finger.
"One word is distinct," remarked the Englishman. "Basileus: that is, priest-emperor. This would be the helmet of an emperor of Byzantium. However could it have reached here?" Abruptly his head lifted. "Julian! Julian the Apostate, who came to the East to search for an unknown god. He met his death down in the desert along the Tigris."
Vasstan laughed. "A legend!"
As they went back slowly to their house Sir Clement seemed tired.
"Was that a cross bearing?" Michal asked curiously.
"Fantastically, yes. Julian makes our fourth king from the West. Like us, Julian was searching here for something unknown to him—what he believed to be a religion."
"Does it help?"
He shook his head. "I'm altogether at a loss. I'm simply putting on an act as you would say, my dear. I'm trying to help Jacob."
She nodded understanding. "Yes, Jacob can see his way through anything." Quickly she glanced at the orientalist. "But he's a child compared to you."
"In a sense, yes. But that is why he has a better chance than I—the two of you together have a better chance." He squared his shoulders. "Steady's the word. We'll try again tomorrow."
The morrow came, and other days followed. Unless it was a day of snow or driving rain, the Englishman insisted on going out, fossicking, as he called it, in company with Jacob, whose patience proved inexhaustible. Michal, aware that they were making no progress, worried silently. Unless they could make some discovery, she knew the Englishman would continue to exhaust himself.
Because she could be no help at their labor, she took to unnecessary tasks. One bright afternoon, when white clouds rolled beneath the summit, she sighted Father Hyacinth's familiar figure down by the water wheel. Dropping the caldron she had come to fill at the lake, she ran over to the silent priest who was watching a woman grind wheat in the mill
.
He smiled so quickly, she wondered if he had expected her at the wheel.
"Father!" she cried at him. "It is good that you have come."
She wanted to pour out all her misgivings and anxieties, even if he could understand very little of them. Jacob had been morose of late.
"It is time," he said amiably, "for the fete of Noel."
Christmas! She had forgotten that it existed. Yet the priest said it would be in three days.
"Tell me, is it a fete here?"
"Of a certainty, my daughter."
Michal could hardly believe that, but she snatched at a chance to glean one of the precious cross bearings from this habitue of Araman.
"These people of Araman, Father Hyacinth, are they Zoroastrians like Mr. Parabat?"
He hesitated, and, sparing of words, shook his head. Michal pretended to be absorbed in the grinding stones. "They are Kurds, aren't they—like the Herki?"
"Not like the Herki."
Suppressing a sigh, Michal cried out, "Who are they, then?"
It did not seem to surprise the priest that she should want so terribly to know this. For the first time he spoke approvingly. "They? Our brothers. Our ancestors and their ancestors were the same, long ago, before the time of Mar Giorgios."
Michal tried to keep her voice casual over the moaning of the stones and the threshing of the wheel. "But that would be a remarkable thing, wouldn't it, Father Hyacinth? How do you know it to be true?"
"It is said in the countryside." Then, seeing Michal's disappointment, he added cheerfully, "In effect, put the clothing of Monsieur Bigsby on Gopal, and the clothing of Gopal on Monsieur Bigsby, and how will you tell which one is the European ?" Pointing across the lake, he indicated the aged Michelangelo who was walking with his grandson looking at the beehives. It occurred to Michal that Father Hyacinth was himself an Armenian.
Again Michal had the sharp realization that there was nothing strange about these people of the mountains. They had been here since time immemorial; only the foreigners were strange and helpless. What should they do in Araman, she begged the swarthy priest, and how should they guide themselves?