by Harold Lamb
"We aren't going to tie those up, Michal," he objected quickly. "And they aren't going to be stored away in the vaults."
"I'm glad of that. But——"
"But nothing. I'm going over every scrap that man has written."
Michal nodded, lifting her head with deep satisfaction.
"He never asked us to do it," Jacob went on, thinking it out. "Still, he'd want it."
Assured now, her eyes became warm and tender. "Perhaps he was trying to tell you."
"Us."
At that she laughed. "I'd be a splendid collaborator." Then she frowned doubtfully. "But isn't it impossible to track down another man's mind just by reading all his notes?"
"Nothing's impossible until you've tried it. Then there's always the chance of a happy accident."
"Your miracle?"
Once more she was poised like her old self, mischievously attentive, and she had forgotten the grim spectacle of the fire.
"If it pleases you to call it that. I prefer the unforeseen."
He pondered that. "Sir Clement hit on something here, with Gopal. Perhaps Gopal will say what it was. Perhaps——"
He could not think of anything else that might help. Listening as if he were announcing all that would happen in the days to come, Michal left the papers and began to tuck up the ivy where it had slipped down. She felt that even if Jacob could not tell for certain, there was a chance and hope.
"Nothing's really impossible, is it, in Araman, anyway? We'll begin tomorrow." Suddenly Michal laughed at herself. "Who could have believed that I'd ever be carrying a torch?"
That night Sergeant Daniel had taken his post at the foot of the stairway. By planting his heavy body on the first step, he could observe the space between the dark loom of the bell tower and the shrine and could see if anyone moved along the path. He had satisfied himself that no one could pass him without waking him if he dozed with his hand through the sling of his rifle. Vasstan had told the Assyrians to watch the steps by night as well as by day. And Daniel had taken the post himself, to let his men sleep.
Not expecting visitors at night, the big Assyrian was drowsing comfortably when he heard the faint tread of someone moving purposefully. Without stirring, the ex-sergeant opened his eyes. An intruder was approaching him. At once Daniel was convinced of two things—that the stranger wore a uniform, and that he knew the path he was following. Daniel's hand lifted the rifle across his knees. The muzzle of a weapon showed over the other's shoulder.
"Stop," grunted Sergeant Daniel. "Tell your name."
Instead of halting, the stranger took a step forward, peering down and laughing. A small white plume showed where the edge of his wide hat was turned up, and he wore the battle dress of the native Levies. "A happy Christmas, Sergeant," he said. "Are you waiting here to greet me, Daniel Toghrak?"
Warily the Assyrian rose; then he exclaimed and threw his arms around the other. "Paul! The son of Kaimars!"
The man named Paul was much younger and slighter than the Assyrian veteran. He had come through the camp without waking anyone else. Because they had been in service together along the African coast from Mersa Matruh to the Mareth line, Daniel begged him to come to the tents and taste brandy and bread. Both were Christians and they spoke English together.
But Paul would not sit down with the sergeant. "I am at the door of my house, Daniel Toghrak.,,
"Here?"
"Here. And I have come so far that if I sit, I shall sleep."
"Ai. Will you climb the steps in the dark?"
"Have they changed their shape in five years?"
In spite of his weariness the youth went on quickly, a light pack and automatic weapon slung over his shoulders. He went with the swing of a long march in his legs.
Wistfully the sergeant peered after* him. Daniel had no home where he could rest with his wife and daughters. Sitting upon his step, he reflected, and felt cheered because the boy who had spoken to him would soon be asleep by his own fire.
Instead of going to the village, the soldier turned aside at the summit. Crossing the plaza, he went up into the majesty of moonlight at the altar height. There he slowed his steps and unslung his pack and weapon. At the basin of water he stopped to wash his hands.
He did not go up the altar steps. The Watchman came down to him, to look carefully into his face. Revealed under the turned-up brim of the hat it was a good-humored face, only the wide lips and the eyes, deep-set between cheekbone and brow, showed a weariness that was more than fatigue. After a moment the Watchman nodded as if satisfied and asked a question.
Paul had come back. Were the others with him?
The soldier shook his head. The two others who went out were not coming back: they had been killed.
When the Watchman said nothing more, Paul raised the back of his hand to his forehead and turned away, to pick up his pack. With a curious glance at the closed door and with the padlock that shut in the arms collection, he descended to the village street.
The lamps had been extinguished, but he found his way easily into Imanya's house. Putting down his things, he drew off his boots with infinite care. Then silently he went to the side of the sleeping woman who had drawn a scarf over her head. Crouching by her, he opened his jacket and warmed his hands at the embers of the fire.
Almost at once his head began to sink, and with a sigh of relief he crawled to an outspread sheepskin and lay down. After a deep breath or two he was asleep.
On Christmas day it snowed in the morning. The sun, on its first day of new strength, remained invisible. From the gray sky wind drove the hard snow in particles that swept the mount like spray.
Under the silvered firs the sheep huddled in close-packed circles. Instead of staying under their roofs, however, the villagers came into the street when the first fires were lighted. From each house they came to the door of Imanya's house.
Voices flung out against the snow. Excitement stirred the village like a fever. Father Hyacinth, plodding by, stopped to listen and turned into Imanya's door. The fire blazed under spits and caldrons, and the stout woman perspired as she hurried around it, handing out honey and curdled milk and bits of meat on long strips of bread. These she pressed upon all the visitors anxiously, and hastened to the bearded priest. "Khwasti-bi!" she exclaimed. She had grown taller this morning and her broad cheeks twitched with smiles.
Behind the fire in the place of honor sat the young soldier, no older than Michal. The villagers were plying him with questions, and he answering them, so quickly that Father Hyacinth could not follow the words. "Paul, son of Kaimars," he exclaimed, and added, "and Imanya!"
She brushed her hair from her eyes hastily. "He is well. They wounded him, but he is well again."
"Did you stop at the monastery, my son?" he asked. Paul had been baptized at the monastery of Saint George before he had gone out into the world to study as a boy at the University of Lausanne.
"No, Father Hyacinth, I came straight from the river." Paul laughed. "I hurried!"
A shadow passed over the priest's face. The boy he had known as an eager student had not gone first to the monastery; he had hurried to his own fireside. This gaunt soldier of no more than thirty years appeared older than the elders of Araman; he held mysteries in his mind, and he had learned to be silent. There was a tightness of strain in him that he hid from the simple people. Once he turned to the meditative priest.
"The monastery is safe."
"If God permits."
"It is safe. But in the foothills I heard talk of Araman—I saw military supply trains encamped."
"Not near, Paul."
"Near enough. I should know."
And quickly he thrust into his mouth the pieces of broiled mutton that Imanya had saved for him jealously. With an ember from the fire Father Hyacinth lighted the tobacco in his pipe, pondering. Before now the mount of Araman had been more secluded from the outer world than the monastery at its threshold. Now that was changing. Only one of the young men who had gone forth fr
om Araman at the start of the war had returned. These people were happy because Paul had been restored to them. But what could one mind accomplish here, except to warn them of the change that was coming?
In overcoats and gloves, Rudolf Vasstan and Jan Matejko emerged restlessly from their curtained doorway and wandered up to the altar where snow had covered the blackened remains of the pyre. They did not know what they should do this Christmas morning. Finally they called at Michal's door, and she came out wearing her clean white dress with the scarlet scarf tucked into its throat.
Vasstan ejaculated "Grüss Gott!" and she smiled at the old German greeting. She did not bid them come in, she explained, because Jacob was working—later they must come for some tea. Matejko bowed from the hips. The sight of her was enough, so joyous she seemed.
"God keep you," he murmured.
Matejko saw in Michal's face the small face of his wife alight with expectancy, lifted to his in the shadow of the silver firs along the walk above Lwow. For an instant in this doorway that young face had come before his eyes as clearly as if it had never changed.
"Here," said Vasstan abruptly. "A gift for Undine from an old man."
And he handed her the key of the lock to the armory. "For Captain Ide also, with my compliments." Having made the gesture—he did not know why—he turned away.
Characteristically, he stamped off at that. To thank him, Michal had to call after him. Matejko did not follow, as usual. Not until he returned to their room did the German miss his companion and resent being left alone. He wondered what Matejko and the stupid Americans had found to do on a day when there was obviously nothing to do except pass the time.
Matejko hugged to himself the memory of his wife that had become so vivid. At such a moment he did not want to go to sit with the German. When he heard the chatter of voices in the village street, the Polish colonel turned in at a door where candles blazed recklessly, and found himself in the abode of Gopal. The painter did not seem surprised. Quickly he offered the silent officer a dish of raisins and fruit—tokens of the new life that would come in the spring, when the sun, reborn, shone again. Politely Matejko accepted some, and Gopal turned back to his wall.
This wall had changed overnight. With bits of charcoal Gopal had roughed in the figure of a man. Matejko could make out that the man was young and in uniform, but otherwise he recognized nothing about the portrait. Gopal, however, worked with zest, calling to his grandson to bring him things, and stepping back abruptly from time to time to eye the wall he was transforming.
Idly, the Pole examined the colors Gopal had prepared on slabs of slate. When the painter, seeing his interest, offered him a clean square of silk to experiment with, Matejko began to paint. The silk suggested a flag, and he painted in a red stripe and green, the colors of the new Kurdistan. What other flag could there be in Araman?
For the first time in months he was making something of his own, and enjoying it.
Drawing her fur coat about her and swinging a bronze caldron, Michal went down the village street to draw water to be heated. She hoped to meet Father Hyacinth, but she did not see him. At the point on the lake shore where the water jars and vessels were filled she stopped, surprised.
Ice coated the lake's edge, and when she tried to break through it with a stick she could not do so. A ripple of laughter escaped her—so near to water she was, and out of reach of it.
Then a man taller than herself stepped down and picked up a heavy stone in one arm. Motioning her back, he dropped the stone, shattering the ice.
"It's really very simple, isn't it?" Michal said to herself.
"Most things are."
Surprised a second time, because he had answered in English, she noticed that the soldier wore the insignia of the Levies. He seemed to be pleased—at least he smiled, while his deep eyes surveyed her, wondering. Many men had gazed at Michal admiringly, but this one seemed to question her. She did not laugh when she filled the caldron too full and spilled water over her foot as she tried to drag it up the slippery slope. The soldier took the heavy vessel from her, using his left arm, and she wondered if his other arm were injured. He said his name was Paul, and he spoke excellent English, although he was Imanya's son.
On the way back to her house he asked only one question.
"Why is that door locked?" And he pointed across at the entrance of the armory.
"It isn't—that is, Colonel Vasstan kept it locked, but I have the key now."
"May I open it?"
Without thinking about it, she gave Paul the key, and then, wondering if she had done right, told Jacob what had happened.
He paid little attention because he had sorted out all the manuscript notes carefully and had weighted them down with the copy of Aristotle while he looked over the letters and the worn passport which bore the cryptic stamp "Officially Approved."
One phrase of Aristotle's kept coming back into his mind: Nothing in the natural world exists without a purpose.
There were only three letters. One, in careful schoolboy penmanship, began "DEAR PATER," and said with resolute cheerfulness that it was written within sight of Passchendaele Ridge (whatever that might be), and that Old Fabius had said that he had not done too badly at his first brush-up—he was very fit, and only the rain that flooded the trenches had been bothersome. Old Fabius had said they would be through the German lines and at peace by Christmas. It was signed CEDRIC.
The second letter was more recent, typed under the heading of The Central Asiatic Society. It regretted, in carefully discreet sentences, that the society could not see its way to holding a public reading of General Sir Clement Bigsby's most interesting paper on "An Unknown Primitive Culture," since the society had found it necessary to confine its field of research to the ethnological, and the premise of this paper bordered upon religion.
The third, quite brief, bore the imprint of an Edinburgh publisher and a date just before the war. It said that while the publisher would welcome anything from the hand of Sir Clement, such a subject as an ancient myth in Kurdistan would hardly appeal to the public.
Fleetingly, he caught a meaning in the letters. In India, after his loss, Sir Clement had resigned his commission and turned to writing. His pursuit of Vasstan had been his last turn of duty, and from then on he had forsaken weapons. He had never spoken of that. He had forsaken, weapons . . .
"You're sure that soldier wasn't an Assyrian?" he asked Michal.
Busied over a bowl of tea, she shook her head. Taking his cane, Jacob stepped out to the portico; then seeing that the door of the armory stood open, he made his way across to it. Since his first visit, he had had no sight of the stored weapons, and he was curious to learn what the strange soldier might want of them. While Michal was preparing tea, he could look in.
Again, as he passed down the cavern, he had the impression that the European arms had been stored there for a purpose. Stopping abruptly, he picked up the heavy Hall rifle, one of those presented to the Mikado of Japan. For an instant he wondered if it could use the cartridges of the Assyrians' Enfields. Then when he threw open the heavy breech, he saw that the modern cartridges would never fit. The rifle was useless to him—too heavy to make even a practical club.
Before he could put it back he heard movement in the outer chamber. Silhouetted against the door a slender man in uniform, carrying a Tommy gun, advanced carelessly, apparently not aware of Jacob's presence. Stepping over to the heavy Browning, the relic of the last war, the newcomer placed his own modern weapon beside it. For a second he contemplated the pair of machine guns, then came on toward Jacob.
"Thank you for the key, Captain Ide," his pleasant voice reached Jacob, "and I am sorry to be so late in welcoming you to Araman."
The familiar voice startled Jacob, taking him back to the shop of the Armenian in Cairo where he had bought the bronze horse. "Pauli" he cried. "How in thunder——"
"Home for Christmas, you know." The man of the Levies glanced curiously at the clumsy Hall rifle, and
Jacob put it down hastily. "Imanya is all the family I have." A smile touched his eyes. "I have seen Mrs. Ide. She is lovely, and it is splendid that the two of you came, but——"
"But you couldn't have expected—to find us." Jacob's mind was still wrestling with their meeting in Cairo at Shepheard's steps.
"Not expected." Paul chose his words carefully. "I only hoped. But I didn't know there were two of you. You were alone, so very much alone in Cairo."
It seemed to trouble him that Jacob was no longer alone.
"Would you mind telling me," Jacob demanded, "exactly what you hoped for, when you tackled me at Shepheard's?"
Paul's eyes met his honestly. "Very little, Captain Ide. Kagig—the dealer I took you to—had shown me that winged horse which could only have come from these mountains, saying that an old German had sold it with several other pieces in the bazaar at Baghdad. Kagig wanted me to tell him what it was. But I was afraid the German had reached Araman, and that other foreigners would follow. That might mean harm to my people. I was troubled, and then I heard your friends say how you were a scholar who knew our people of the East. You understand that we do not reason very well, we go by instinct. My instinct told me that an American like you would do no harm to Araman." He laughed, as if at himself. "I half expected you to go to Baghdad, Captain Ide, to investigate the horse. Then Ibrahim at the bridge told me you had passed through, and I hurried."
His carelessness did not deceive Jacob. Paul did not believe that he had been responsible at Cairo for the American's journey—destiny or fate had decided that. So Jacob tried another tack, casually. "I see you've come armed."
"I? No, Captain Ide, I was never issued arms by the British. I was only a stretcher-bearer, what you call a corpsman." Then, seeing Jacob glance at the machine guns, "Oh, I stole that toy to bring back."
"Without ammunition?"
Indifferently, Paul shook his head. Because he did not care to explain further, Jacob pressed him.