Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 2.djvu/391

354 When the nurse heard this, she came up to him and said in the Frank tongue, “How canst thou slay thine own brother’s son and thy sister and thy sister’s daughter?” When he heard this, he was exceeding angry and said to her, “O accursed woman, didst thou not tell me that my mother was murdered and that my father died by poison? Didst thou not give me a jewel and say to me, ‘This jewel was thy father’s’? Why didst thou not tell me the truth?” “All that I told thee is true,” replied she: “but thy case and my own are wonderful and thine and my history extraordinary. My name is Merjaneh and thy mother’s name was Abrizeh. She was gifted with such beauty and grace and valour that proverbs were made of her, and her prowess was renowned among men of war. Thy father was King Omar ben Ennuman, lord of Baghdad and Khorassan. He sent his son Sherkan on an expedition, in company with this very Vizier Dendan; and Sherkan thy brother separated himself from the troops and fell in with thy mother Queen Abrizeh, in a privy garden of her palace, whither we had resorted to wrestle, she and I and her other damsels. He came on us by chance and wrestled with thy mother, who overcame him by the splendour of her beauty and her valour. Then she entertained him five days in her palace, till the news of this came to her father, by the old woman Shewahi, surnamed Dhat ed Dewahi, whereupon she embraced Islam at Sherkan’s hands and he carried her by stealth to Baghdad, and with her myself and Rihaneh and other twenty damsels. When we came to thy father’s presence, he fell in love with thy mother and going in to her one night, foregathered with her, and she became with child by him of thee. Now thy mother had three jewels, which she gave to thy father, and he gave one of them to his daughter Nuzhet ez Zeman, another to thy brother Zoulmekan and the third to thy brother Sherkan. This last thy mother took from Sherkan, and I